Observations on the Geriatric Female Alpaca, Part 2: Bumps, Blindness, and Sore Joints

In the first part of this series we tackled nutritional and reproductive management of older females. Here, as promised, I’m going to talk a little more about some other things that we’ve observed in the older female members of our herd, specifically as it relates to one particular dermatological issue, some conformational problems coming home to roost (really just aging and wear and tear), and eye stuff (cataracts and eye injuries).  As in the part 1 of this series, this is not meant to be some all-encompassing encyclopedia of problems and solutions for all of alpacadom. These are just some of the issues we’ve encountered and how we’ve learned to deal with them after almost 14 years of herd management. Other breeders and/or their vets may indeed have other takes on how to look at some of these problems and there are no doubt any number of ways to approach a given issue. In any case where almost any alpaca husbandry question you can think of is concerned my general advice is that if you are doing something and it’s working for you and your animals, don’t change it. Though there are of course moments on our farm where radical intervention is needed, often times less is more and just because the en vogue solution is more complicated and expensive doesn’t mean for one second that it’s guaranteed to be better for your alpacas. Though having said all of that, if you are ever in doubt do please consult your veterinarian. Ok, so without further ado:

1. “Old lady bumps”

A quick warning: if pus and it’s family of related substances makes you queazy you may want to skip this section. Otherwise, read on…

As our foundation herd has aged we have started to see these appear more and more on several of our older females, particularly some of our Peruvian imports. Honestly, we don’t have any reason to believe that the fact that they are imported or Peruvian really has anything to do with their appearance by the way, the theory goes that’s it’s most likely just one of the many fringe benefits of being a 12+ year old female alpaca. Here most of those animals just happen to have been born in Peru.  So what are are epidermal inclusion cysts or follicular cysts (a tip of the hat to Dr. Susan Johnson for the clinical terminology), or “old lady bumps” as they have all come to be called at CCNF? They seem to be either mutated hair follicles and/or clogged glands. In either case they appear as a pocket of “goo” and can be found anywhere on the head, neck, or torso. We have not up until now ever encountered them on the lower legs and rarely on the lower abdomen, lending further credence to the hypothesis that they are primarily hair follicles run amuck. Though the substance that is inside these starts out with a toothpaste-like consistency, if they are left alone (as most are) the contents will eventually form a relatively hard core.

So you might ask, “If you leave them alone for the most part big talker, how is it then that you know so much about their characteristics?” Why that’s an excellent leading question imaginary guy! We first encountered these cysts several years ago on shearing day. One of them was accidentally nicked as the animal was getting shorn and we realized that the core could be squeezed out much as one would normally do with a shot abscess. Just like an abscess, the larger of these cysts can create pressure and discomfort for the animal in question and if we encounter a really big one (one of our females this past year had one that was perhaps the equivalent size/volume of two golf balls at the base of her tail) we will intentionally lance and squeeze out the core. Yuck. In any case a little antiseptic gel or spray on the outside of the resulting wound after one has extricated all the nasty stuff from within and the animal in question should be good to go. There is no need for glueing, stitching, or anything of that nature in most cases. While this is something we deal with ourselves, if you aren’t comfortable doing so yourself,  just have your veterinarian take care of it. In any case it should be said that based upon all of the research and testing we have done here, these cysts are completely benign and pose no major health risk to the animals in question (just some potential discomfort) if left alone. We have some older girls here that might have just two or three of these things that we find on their bodies during shearing day each spring. A few other animals though are seemingly covered with them. In all cases we tend to leave the cysts alone unless they are threatening to rupture on their own anyway (again like a shot abscess) or they are of such a size and location that they are obviously causing serious discomfort to the alpaca in question.

2. Soreness & Slowness

You know how members of your human family often slow down as they get older?  Alpacas, especially female alpacas who have gone through the wear and tear of carrying pregnancies for many years, are no different. The extra weight produced by those crias over time (a full term pregnancy can easily approach 35 lb. of added weight) can often affect both a female’s spine (not uncommon to see some spinal sag, or sway back, in an older girl) as well as cause and/or exacerbate problems in the shoulders, hips, knees, and pasterns. Arthritis is just as common in older alpacas as it is humans and though it can be found in any alpaca, it tends to rear it’s head more so in those females that might have had some prior conformational flaws. That’s right: all those descriptions and diagrams in the show rule books (a scandalous breed standard without in fact being codified as one…there might even be a hidden agenda there, you know: like healthy animals or something) and the the anatomy texts do in fact have a real world application. A female alpaca that has correct and straight limb angulation in her front legs, for instance, is far less apt to have arthritic issues in them at an older age than one who has significant angulation from the knees down (viewed from the front that alpaca would appear to be toeing out). I can also say that those of our older girls who have correct leg conformation in their rear legs (not cow hocked or base narrow) are often the ones still out pronking with the crias well into their early teens, all other things being equal. Show me a 12 year old that is slow to get up and perhaps hobbles around at times (we’ve surely got some of those too) and chances are she had some underlying conformational flaw that has, over time, led to those symptoms. Again, like the old lady bumps, limb and joint soreness is rarely if ever fatal in and of itself. What it can do in its more extreme forms though is affect a female’s quality of life and hinder her ability to fully participate in the day to day activities of her herd. This is not such a big deal if she is no longer in production. Though she will potentially require some extra attention if one is still expecting her to carry a cria to term and then suckle it for 6 months. A older female that finds it harder to get up and move around may choose to lay around more rather than joining her peers in grazing and eating even when we are just talking about hay feeders in a dry lot setup. She may also be less inclined to get up as often as her cria might like, thus not allowing the baby to nurse as often is it ideally would. Not that those situations are unmanageable. Those scenarios just require some attentiveness from you, the human caretaker, to make sure that everyone (dam, cria, and potentially a 2nd cria in the form of a new pregnancy) involved is getting what they need calorically given the female’s reduced enthusiasm for physical exertion. Though there are many different potential scenarios, the most common case here often just requires adjusting an older female’s nutritional supplementation, or her ability to access that supplementation (a free choice grain feeder for instance or access to richer hay) so that she gets more bang (calories) for her buck. Sometimes you need to nurse your older females so that they can better nurse their own crias. Let’s face it, bottle babies suck. I believe that is both a bad pun and a double entendre…sweet.

3. Eye Troubles

Eye problems and cataracts in particular are a reality in older alpacas. In fact I would be willing to wager that they occur with far more frequency than many owners/breeders are even aware of. This all harkens back to one of my favorite topics in the alpaca husbandry realm: the alpaca’s natural instinct to mask weakness or illness because of its origins as a prey species. Not feeling well? Can’t see? Got a bum leg? Fake it! Whatever you do, blend in with the rest of the herd as best you can.

Granted, the larger the herd (or on a larger farm/ranch a feed group) the easier it is to blend in. This is certainly true with any alpaca suffering from impaired vision. We had one girl who for years lived with cataracts that got progressively worse as she went into her mid teens, so much so that at the time of her passing she was perhaps 90 to 95% blind. Not that you would have known this viewing her from a distance. This was primarily because of her buddy, Margarita, on whose hip this female learned to stay. Margarita in essence became her seeing eye alpaca. Whether going out to pasture or navigating under the dutch doors we have half closed during the cold months in all of our barns, so long as she had her pal showing her the way, she could do enough to pass for being fully sighted.  Though cataract surgery was considered for the female in question, in the end we decided that the stress on the animal wasn’t worth it so long as she was able to get around and enjoy a good quality of life. We were also being realistic: given that the animal in question was already at least 15 at the time (another early import) the potential gain, which would have involved removing the lens in her eye, restoring full but now blurry vision, was outweighed by the risk of putting a girl of her age under anesthesia. As it was she (and to a lesser extent we) adapted and she was able to live out the final years of her life in relative comfort.

I will say that one of the definite downsides of older animals with impaired vision of varying degrees is that we do see an increase in actual eye injuries: scratches and even the occasional nasty puncture wound. If older girls can’t see that little sprig sticking out of the hay they’re eating, sometime it ends up poking right into the eye itself. They also seem prone to itching their eyes more so than their younger compatriots, even if the the thing they itch that eye with is seemingly the sand on the ground. As you can imagine, that can all lead to some pretty nasty looking eye problems. These can range from run-of-the-mill conjunctivitis (it’s like preschool with hay!) to some pretty gnarly looking wounds. Thankfully the eye of an alpaca is capable of suffering immense trauma and still healing with a little help from us. One animal last year, for instance, literally punctured its eyeball with a small twig, perhaps 1/4″ thick. Though it looked like a horror movie close-up when we began treatment, 3 to 4 weeks later you would never have guessed that anything had happened and only a close inspection at the time would have revealed a tiny spot of scar tissue. The animal in question still has full use of that eye, BTW. We have heard of several cases of veterinarians wanting to remove eyes in such cases, though based on everything we have experienced here over the years that seems to be a bit heavy handed and unnecessarily dramatic. We have had great success in recent years treating severe eye injuries with a combination of antibiotic ointment as well as some serum spun out in a centrifuge from the animal’s own blood. Obviously not every alpaca owner has their own centrifuge though their vet almost certainly does, so just have them do the blood draw and the spinning-out for you. In any case don’t get freaked out when you encounter an eye injury, with a little TLC these animals are capable of healing themselves to a truly remarkable degree. They may, as in many other scenarios, just need an assist from you!