Willie Update

I thought ya'll might like to check back in with little Willie, the injured alpaca cria, and see how he's doing.  Amazingly, he's great!  He's happily chugging down three 8-10 oz bottles a day, in fact he's drinking a little more goat milk a day than I milk in a day.  I've started getting local cow's milk again, and I'll keep giving Willie all the goat milk, plus a little cow to get him as much as he wants, and then the rest of the cow milk is for us.  

The gaping hole in his side is no longer gaping, nor a hole - unbelievably, it is down to a dimple about nickel-sized of raw, pink flesh.  It closes up noticably day to day, and even morning to evening.  Now, the downside is that it's become apparent that the puncture actually went all the way into his stomach - twice, he's started leaking grass-fluid out the hole, and once it actually breathed quite a bit of air out while we were cleaning it - not what a typical wound is supposed to do!  We were pretty worried, but Caleb talked to the vet, and it sounds like this isn't as dire a situation as it seems.  Simultaneously, I realized it is a similar situation to when animals get severe bloat, and the last resort is to use a trocar and cannula to let the gas out - basically giving the stomach a tracheotomy.  The vet said the rumen usually stays pretty tight up against the muscle wall, and won't leak any contents into the stomach cavity - as long as it stops draining out the wound (which it has), the interior hole should seal itself against the stomach wall.  So as long as that continues to hold true Willie shouldn't have problems in that regard, and so it's looking pretty good for him.  I've been trying not to get attached, for several reasons - the most obvious that it seemed pretty unlikely he'd make it! - but it sure is hard, he's a sweet, tough little guy.  

The other reason I'm trying not to get attached is something called "Berserk Male Syndrome" - fairly self-explanatory!  It occurs in alpaca males that were handled too much as babies, and they get overly aggressive when grown - not so much to humans, but to other alpacas.  Apparently they bond with the human rather than the pacas, and then think and act like they are human and dominant.  We actually had one, one of the first two we bought.  He was great while it was just him and Abraham, and then we bought 3 more...  Blue went crazy, he wouldn't let any of the alpacas go more than 10-15 feet from the corner of the pasture.  Ever.  If they tried, he'd fight them back into the corner, and often end up taking them to the ground and sitting on them for long periods of time.  We tried several things, but ended up selling him, because he just wasn't managable.  

I really don't want that to happen to Willie, so I'm trying to not handle him more than necessary.  All directions I've read for bottle-feeding crias say to "feed them and walk away - no snuggling, petting, etc."  It's so hard, though, especially since the "poor little thing" is injured!  It's just unnatural-feeling to not give him some TLC.    

We moved the alpacas into a separate pasture on Sunday (along with preventative worming, thiamine, and nail-trimming), just them and the 4 sheep.  We temporarily put Willie, Annie, Reba and her cria Hank in with the milk goats so that we can both catch Willie for bottles and medical treatment, and feed Reba extra rations. She is pretty thin, probably at least partly from nursing Hank, and she needs to bulk up heading into winter, especially since she's presumably pregnant as well.  They are in adjacent pastures with the rest of the pacas, and everyone seems pretty happy now.  Willie's got his buddy back, Annie's (basically) got her herd back, and she and Reba get yummy beet pulp and sunflower seeds every day!  We're going to try to pay better attention to all of them - they are close to the house now, and we don't have to dodge big horned cows to work with them.  We'll also supplementally feed them this winter, get some copper into them, and hopefully we won't lose any more.