Re: kaogel in 3 day old alpaca?

scatty — Tue, 09 Jul 2013 15:38:06 GMT

Thanks for your reply. My colleague went out to see the alpaca yesterday and it was put to sleep as deteriorating really quickly. We are looking into plasma transfusions for this situation in future as if the owners know about it, they can get us out to do this after birth if the cria doesn't suck.......

Re: kaogel in 3 day old alpaca?

Michael Woodhouse — Mon, 08 Jul 2013 09:45:44 GMT

You need to see the cria and take blood. So long as the cria is normally hydrated then do a PCV and total solids. If you have a little centrifuge take it with you. In calves we work on less than 5.5g/dl (55g/l depending on your refractometer scale) indicating failure of passive transfer. I use the PCV as a guide and if that is elevated it screams dehydration and artificial concentration of your protein estimate.

I don't see any point in Kaogel.

Many, many lambs and calves get away with varying degrees of passive transfer so long as kept in clean environments where disease challenge is low.

Plasma transfusion has no window of opportunity and can be done any time. It's not technically hard and very satisfying, but works out quite expensive in terms of vet time. Usually your best donor is a large male if they have one. NB I know nothing of llama blood groups!

They can be quite delicate little things in my limited llama experience.

Get a sample of scour sent away unless you have the in house kits.