Sunday 14 December 2008

A dark dark world.

I am living in a dark world at the moment which is, to say the least, rather irritating.
My day job, which I have to say I am finding rather loathesome at the moment, is interfering with my alpaca interaction.
I am half way through a four day stretch of 10 hour days shifts. I leave home at 6.30am (in the dark) and return at 5.30pm (in the dark).
Consequently I don't see the fluffy munchkins. The mighty herd is being looked after well by Sue and she gives me routine updates on them during the day, particularly a couple of our cria who are suffering from rickets, but it's not the same I miss them.
It is a bit of a mystery, we had nine cria this year and all have received the same medication and treatment but only two are showing signs of rickets.
For those of you unaware of the symptoms of rickets the classic signs are that the affected animal seems very quiet and slow and develops very stiff legs. They can get a bit 'hoppy' at the back. This in turn puts them off their food as their joints are all very stiff and they lie down a lot. Rickets is caused by a deficiency of Vitamin D which they would normally get from sunshine. Does anyone remember sunshine……..in summer………..in the UK? Anyway we inject all our alpacas with AD&E every two months during the winter. For some reason Jack and Jonah seem to need extra, which they have had. It will take a couple of weeks for the extra vitamins to take effect but hopefully they will make a full recovery. We have dosed all the other cria again to prevent any others getting it.
Ooh hark at me sounding all knowledgeable. Actually, as usual, thanks must go to the Uncle Timothy of Inca for his wise words of wisdomness.

3 comments:

Rob @ Wellground said...

Hi Mark,

Lots of people have lots of solutions. I don't know if it helps, but we now inject our cria with vitamin A&D monthly throughout the winter, rather than every two months. It might be worth trying.

Hope they recover OK

Rob

Patou Alpacas said...

Thanks for that Bob I think we might do that in future.

Lucy said...

Yes, it's hard to get through the winter. Our pacas are fine so far, fingers x despite our lack of daylight.