On October 5th I returned home unexpectedly from a backpacking trip in Baxter State Park. The weather had turned bad and we didn't want to continue in the snow. When I arrived home I found Nancy in a rather distressed condition. It seems that Latte was refusing to nurse the baby. Whenever the cria would try to nurse, Latte would lay down. Nancy had contacted a couple of other breeders in the area and they thought it might be mastitis. So she haltered Latte and made her stand while the cria nursed. We thought that the crisis was over. Boy were we wrong!

The next day Latte refused to eat with the rest of the animals. I spent a lot of time with her and finally got her to eat some grain from my hand. This went on through out the day. I thought that once I got some food into her she would start to recover. When I got up the next day and found that she was in the same condition, I decided that it was time for a trip to the vets. We didn't have a trailer yet so I drove up to Dawn and John Brooker's farm to see if I could borrow theirs. Unfortunately they were off to a fair and had taken their trailer with them. So I went back home, took the seats out of our mini van, put a tarp and some hay on the floor, loaded up Latte and Honey, and headed for the vets. The closest vet which tends to camelids is over an hour away so I had plenty of time to worry on the trip.

Once we arrived at the vets I breathed a sigh of relief and thought things would be OK now. The vet examined them both and then came out to discuss their condition with me. She told me that the cria was fine, but she wasn't sure if she could save Latte, I was shocked. It seemed that she was extremely anemic, in fact based on the results of her blood work she shouldn't be alive. Her blood count was only 4.5 and the vet said that she was taught in school that an animal could not survive with a count of less than 10 or 11. She had seen another alpaca once with a count of 7 which did survive. Her tests seemed to show that the Eperythrozoa parasite was the cause of the problem.

This parasite attaches itself to the red blood cells which distorts the shape of the cell. The pancreas interprets the distorted cell as defective and filters it out of the blood stream. Under normal conditions the host animal can make enough new red blood cells to keep up, so the parasite causes no significant problem. Our assumption in this case was that the stress of being moved several times that summer, coupled the the stress of giving birth and lactation, had weakened Latte to the point where she just couldn't keep up.

When I asked how something like this could happen so quickly, Dr. Perkins explained that this condition had probably existed for a long time. She then explained how alpaca are a prey species and that their instincts tell them to keep up with the herd and look "normal" as long as they possibly can. In the wild any animal that lags behind the herd or appears to be weak will attract predators. Latte had exhibited this kind of behavior. Up until 48 hours before our trip to the vet she had appeared to be perfectly healthy, at least to an inexperienced person like myself. Apparently if I had looked at her gums or the inside of her eyelids I would have noticed that they were gray or white when they should be quite pink. This would be an indication the the animal was anemic and corrective action could have been taken.

I left both Latte and Honey in the care of the vet and returned home. Shortly after arriving home I received a call from the vet asking for permission to euthanize Latte. The added stress of strange people handling her and administering treatment had pushed over the edge and she was slowly dying. The only humane thing to do was to put her down. I gave my permission and it was over.

Good Bye Latte, we will miss you.