Now it can be told.

We have almost come to view it as tradition: we go away for a little R&R somewhere and the you-know-what inevitably hits the fan in one form or another back here on the farm. Hey, with a herd this size it’s just par for the course, especially during cold weather (ok, relatively cold weather). Not that our Herd Manager, Kim McAllister, isn’t eminently capable of handling whatever devious plans the alpaca fates might toss her way. Amongst her many other excellent qualities, it’s one reason why she is held in such high esteem here! From our perspective though not being here on the ground when the crisis du jour hits no doubt slightly magnifies the stress level for all involved. In any case while the little tale below turned out to be much ado about nothing in the end, there was many a clenched jaw in the short term. Prudence required that we previously keep things quiet about this until we fully understood the situation at hand and knew where things stood. Read on…

A bit of a back story here. One of our foundation females, Flashy (yes, that one: crappy animals don’t get ill), had been put into sickbay at the Arena’s warm room back in late November after she started to lose body condition and weight. Mind you that was without the aid of a nursing cria as well. Flashy had gone through a similar situation in 2010 and for the second year in a row all attempts to diagnose a specific problem, or at least it’s cause, had come up empty. We of course ran fecal tests repeatedly and a blood panel (cancer is always a prime suspect when an animal is experiencing rapid weight loss) as well as testing her for Mycoplasma Haemolamae (EPE), the blood parasite which attacks an animal’s red blood cells. The tests came back negative and the blood panel merely showed low protein levels which equated to anemia, no big surprise there. Saying an animal that’s thin and losing weight is anemic is right up there with observing that it’s darker when the sun has gone down, they often go hand in hand.

The only difference from 2010 was that we had picked up on Flashy’s declining body condition much sooner this time around. The prior year the thing that had finally turned Flashy around was when Jen and Kim had transfaunated her: taking the regurgitated rumen of another alpaca — to be specific our grumpy old female, Starlight Snow, bless her heart — and tubing it into Flashy’s stomach.  The collection of the regurgitant is actually a pretty funny — if rather smelly — process. We put a a long OB glove/sleeve over Starlight’s snout, tickle her belly and she proceeds to just barf the stuff right out. Though her general attitude towards her human caretakers may leave something to be desired for our part we think she’s dreamy…but I digress. Knowing what had worked the year before we went back to that playbook the week before Christmas, tubing some of Starlight Snow’s regurgitated gut content into Flashy a couple of times and a few days apart. Lo and behold shortly thereafter Flashy started to put weight and body condition back on as she had done the year before. Hurray: we learned something from prior experience! Cue the credits, happy ending, and all that, right? Well not so fast Walt Disney. There was yet to be a wrinkle of sorts in the tale.

As we had gone about trying to diagnose what it was that had been afflicting our sick alpaca, our veterinarian, Susan Johnson, had of course been out to look at Flashy multiple times as vets are wont to do when animals are not well. At some point in the process Susan had noticed that Flash was developing lesions down around her gum line on her lower jaw as well as on her upper palate. Curious. Though that observation didn’t set off any big alarms for any of us, one of the nuances, shall we say, of federal law is that veterinarians are required to report any sightings of oral lesions to the State Veterinarian, because of the theoretical risk of an outbreak of Hoof and Mouth Disease. The first time Susan reported that she had seen something here was December 19th, yet the authorities in question seemed uninterested. In the mean time we had decided to transfaunate Flashy and we (Ian and Jen) then headed off on our post-Christmas family trip leaving Kimmy in charge on the farm. All was calm.

You know it’s coming. So there we were in the BVI on Friday January 6th, with just a few days left in our vacation having a grand old time, sailing, swimming, and drinking entirely too much delicious cold Heineken (did I mention that I like beer?), when the text message came in from Kim: the Vermont State Veterinarian just applied a blanket quarantine of CCNF effective immediately. What!? There is nothing worse than wanting more information and being in a situation where it is hard to come by. It turned out that after 2+ weeks of getting reports from Susan of seeing lesions on Flashy whenever she would check in on her, the State Vet had decided that testing was in fact needed to rule out not just Hoof and Mouth Disease but also various Pox viruses (I confess total ignorance on those) that they worry about in the livestock world. No animals were to be allowed to come or go from the farm until testing was completed ruling out all of the above. A federal vet from Massachusetts that was qualified to do testing on exotic species (alpacas are classified by the USDA as livestock but we still fall under the “exotic” category) even drove up that very evening to take a swab from Flashy’s mouth. While we knew in our heart of hearts that the chances of our farm in Vermont becoming ground zero for a cataclysmic livestock disease outbreak in the United States were pretty obscure, it was nonetheless an uncomfortable spot to be in. For those who might not recall what happens when there is an outbreak of Hoof and Mouth Disease, here is a recap of coverage from the BBC following the 2001 outbreak in the UK. It’s not pretty. The only sure-fire way to contain an outbreak of H&M is to cull an entire herd/flock in which the disease has been found.

It sure would have been nice if having gone to the trouble of sounding the alarm and racing up here on a Friday night, the powers that be could have at least gotten the testing materials to the lab in short order. Bureaucracy being what it is though, the infamous swab from Flashy’s cheek didn’t even hit the mail until the following Monday though at least by that time we were back at home and feeling a little better about things. Flashy meanwhile was continuing to improve and was now pounding weight back on at a rate of some 5 pounds per week. One thing about animals with Hoof and Mouth Disease is that they tend to die. Flashy had other ambitions though, she didn’t get that memo. Finally on Friday, January 20th a full two weeks later, we found out from the State Veterinarian that all of the tests had come back negative and that the quarantine was lifted. I freely admit to being equal parts relieved and annoyed. Never a dull moment, I guess?

So what do we know about Flashy and her infamous lesions? Well, for starters we know that they have gone away without us doing anything else. For whatever it’s worth she is a serial nibbler of bedding (we are currently using rather chaffy straw) and likes to rub her mouth on the mini feeders we have in all of our pens. It’s possible the lesions may just have been symptomatic of her engaging in those behaviors more than usual when she wasn’t feeling well? It’s all conjecture. In any case looking at the bigger picture, the working hypothesis right now is that she did indeed most likely contract a virus of some sort late last fall which amongst its side affects was that it caused the fauna in her gut to temporarily die off. As a ruminant that would be a problem. Thankfully we now seem to know how to counter that with our lovely rumen donor. There is no denying that fifteen years into this crazy ride of ours one of its great attractions is that we are still learning new things all of the time. While it would be nice if those things came with a little less drama than the tale above, sometimes you just have to take it as it comes. Onward and upward we go…