Well, hello and welcome to this. Webinar. We are going to be discussing winter issues in camels.
And by that I mean the sort of things that you, as a vet, might be called to deal with in the winter months. So it's by no means an exhaustive list of things that might kick off in winter. But, I hope it just gives you a quick rundown of the common cases that you might have to deal with.
Little bit of background for you. My name is Amy Saran. I'm not just a cameli vet.
I do, all sorts of different farm species within my job. I've actually got a PhD in dairy cattle lameness. But as far as CAMELI are concerned, I am the head of the cameli CLI clinical interest group at vet partners.
Where I'm also on the farm exec. I have a certificate in advanced cameli veterinary practise. And I am also, an advanced practitioner.
I'm now the secretary of the British Camelot Veterinary Society as well. So I do do a lot of Camelot related activities, but I have to stress that I don't think I'm an expert. I'm just an enthusiast, so I'm hoping to sort of rub some of that enthusiasm off on you guys.
But I'm always available for clinical queries or finding out ways in which you want to enhance your education when it comes to Camelots. Now what I'm not going to talk about too much today is drugs and dosages, and this is because it'll take up a lot of time. You'll be frantically scribbling, and also there is a an open source came lid formulary that is available to you or through the Vet Partners website.
So the link is right there, and you can use that. Print it off, keep it, and that is updated annually. And also the references are checked.
So that's probably the most up to date, evidence based formula that we have. And I hope that you find that useful now. A little recap, about camels.
You'll find different parameters in different, you know, textbooks and sources. But this is just basically what I work to. When I'm doing a clinical exam of a camelo patient now in pink, you'll see that I've put some extra values.
They often aeons so they tend to run a little higher and a little hotter than adult animals, something that I tend to encourage owners to get to grips with examining before I even get to a case or when I'm triaging. It is the membrane colour or conjunctive or colour. A lot of these animals are pigmented in the mouth, So actually, teaching owners how to extrude the conjunctive or membranes is really, really handy.
And they can give you an idea of whether that animal is looking normal for itself or whether it is whiter than normal, or if we are dealing with something that is possibly septicaemic because that might influence on how quickly you want to get to one of these cases, and then just a couple of extra values such as P, CV, TP and specific gravity, though it must be stressed. But they can be up and walking at like a P CV of six. They are phenomenal, at binding haemoglobin, and that is because of where they come from.
So there's just a little bit of terminology that might make you feel more comfortable when you're conversing with owners. The came lid in the middle at the top is is a llama, a very handsome one at that. And then we are moving down into our alpacas that we commonly have in the UK That is the sui in the middle with the sort of pencil type locks and then the fluffier one that we are more used to That is the the waka, which is more popular here in the UK.
I'm not gonna go wild on talking about the other types of New World came lids. We're just gonna focus, really on what we consider domestic species here in the UK. Now, the British Alpaca Society has a registry of of pedigree and registered animals.
But if we go by how many animals shearers tend to see annually, we're probably looking at about 65,000 alpacas in the UK and around 6000 llamas. They're not, as ubiquitous, and these are kept for various different reasons. They're kept in trekking enterprises.
They're kept as pets or companions. They're kept for blood stock and, you know, development of their genetic potential breeding animals fibre. And they also, you know, are part of various different enterprises like alpaca, yoga and lots of different, farm businesses, are quite attracted to them, but primarily they are a fibre producer, and most commercial farms are also into producing blood stock.
They are from the Andean plains. And that does have a bearing on how they behave down here, more or less at sea level. I work in Essex, so we are basically at sea level here.
They're from equatorial climates and high altitude, which means they deal with drought really well. They've got this brilliant spiral colon, which means they can keep hold of water really, really effectively. And they also are really, really good at finding haemoglobin.
So that means that you can have animals that have quite severe anaemia but look ostensibly normal, especially to the untrained eye. These animals do need some form of stewardship and husbandry. They are sheared annually.
There is no wild for these animals. They are all stewarded by somebody. And they are required to be gathered and sheared to prevent heat stress.
Couple of other bits of terminology just to help your comfort. Their their wool is referred to mainly as fibre, but also can be referred to as fleece. The baby ones are called CREA, and not a lot of people use these terms to be honest for female and male.
But, you can use them and feel fancy if you so wish, if an animal, if an alpaca is lying down, that is called Cushing. So if an owner tells you that they're Cushing more often than normal, it just means they're lying down more often than they normally would. But if you actively tie that animal down as a form of restraint, you are chucking it, and I will show you, how we do that, in a short while now, the usual sort of carving terminology would be unpacking.
But you can also hear it referred to as creation, which I really enjoy, cos it's quite funny. These are some of the regular husbandry tasks that we have to undertake in came lids. So I've already said that we share them annually, but also we need to be checking up on their teeth and their toenail condition.
Now that really depends on what that animal's job is. What sort of standing there is on the farm, whether they've got sort of concrete and hard standing. The weather.
And some animals just have the propensity to grow, their toenails just more than the rest, like White Wai seem to be really overrepresented in my toenail trims. And the reason that I've highlighted some of these in pink is because these are the things that might be skewed towards the winter or be relevant in the winter months. So we should always be doing body condition, scoring of our of our animals.
But, you know, this becomes more pertinent in the winter when their nutrient and energy requirements are higher just by virtue of it being colder and wetter. We wanna be weighing Korea, ideally daily when they're first born to track their growth. But that might move to to weekly intervals.
And because Korea are born in the summer, you know their their growth is their growth phase is is much steeper over this winter period. So we need to be tracking them really effectively, up until weaning, which they do at around six months. But it's it's also more based on weight.
So getting them to that target or catching them if they are unwell, and not hitting those targets is a winter job. And also because the weather has settled down a bit and hopefully fly populations are dwindling. Then castration, is more commonly undertaken in the colder months.
And that's surgical castration. Of course, Vitamin D supplementation is one of the things that we have to do because obviously we've drawn these animals away from their sort of high up equatorial regions. And they are not particularly adept at, absorbing vitamin D from from the sun, particularly because they are quite headed creatures.
So we do exogen exogenous supplementation over the winter months, and I'll go into that in a little bit more depth now. Primarily, my winter based problems do tend to be around, the digestive tract, and basically weight loss. You might find that animals are reported to be suddenly quite skinny.
This this often happens after shearing because they're so heavily fibre, and then they are sheared. And then suddenly we've got, you know, a very skinny animal, in front of us that we might not have noticed because we haven't had hands on it. But also over the winter months.
You know, it's really pertinent that, like these animals maintain their condition simply to get them through. Times of of greater energy need. They're quite stoic animals, so they don't tend to let you know that they're unwell until they're quite desperately unwell.
Which is why it's really important to actually trust owner reports when they say to you that their animal is not doing particularly well or it's just not behaving normally, they are usually right, and there is usually something wrong with it. And also, as I said, fibre will mask lots of problems and that will be growing back over winter. Sometimes we're not necessarily just focused on weight loss in an animal, but a failure to gain weight or failure to thrive, which is especially important in our growing animals like our neonates.
And I find generally that you know that there are sort of management issues that feed into these conditions, usually to do with parasite management. That's, can be obviously more common with inexperience, and that's why it's really important that we work together and do health plans and protocols, for our Camelot owners, particularly if they are new to the game or inexperienced. But basically, the more contact we have with the owners, the better our awareness of the challenges that they're encountering on farm are.
And the more likely we are to be the first port of call for information rather than other avenues like Facebook, which can be wildly unreliable. This is how I like to sort of frame my triaging questions. I like to come at it from a really nonjudgmental place.
But it is more of a recipe for, like, a low stress visit. So sometimes I will do this over the phone. When I'm presented with a potential for a sick animal call, I want to know certain things.
I wanna know the vaccination history. I wanna know. You know what it was vaccinated with?
You know who by when how vaccines are stored. Basically, I'm trying to get to the bottom of whether I can trust that that vaccine was put in in a compliant manner. There is a habit among a lot of cameli owners to have their animals vaccinated on shearing day.
And this is not something I recommend, mainly because sharing is quite a stressful day, no matter how gentle, and considered it is. And we can't necessarily rely on an appropriate immune response being generated on a stressful day. So I do prefer that to be done at a different time.
And sometimes these vaccines sort of travel around the shearers that they're not supposed to, because they're off licence and therefore prescription only medicines and came lids so they shouldn't be travelling around with the shearers. But then we can't guarantee the cold chain even, you know, as a really basic thing. So I often treat these animals as unvaccinated.
If this has been the protocol, they are as a matter of course, hopefully vaccinated for clostridial disease. But as I said before, everything is off licence, so we've got to sort of move with what the owners have been doing and just try and ameliorate it if there is, a discrepancy between what they're doing and what we recommend. What I also want to know is the worm management history.
I've tried to change my tactic by from saying, you know, when were they last wormed or what's your worming history? Because not every animal needs to be wormed. What I'm more interested in investing in is getting owners to, you know, to do faecal egg counts and understand what sort of worm burdens they have on their farm.
So I'll ask them, Do you routinely faecal egg count? When were they last checked? What treatments were administered, if any?
And it's also really important because the dosages are different. In came lids to the label doses for the species for which they were intended, that they tell me what sort of dose they use and how they administered it. Because they don't always, you know, work as effectively as they might in, say, sheep for for who they're designed.
It's also really important that we ascertain when an animal is pregnant. Camelots are pregnant pretty much all year. They they only get a really little break.
If they are breeding animals, they can be pregnant sort of around the 355 day mark. They can extend that if they so wish. But, it obviously does play into how you treat an animal.
And also what might potentially be wrong with her if I've got a collaring male. Then I might be considering more of a bladder scan just to check that he doesn't have urolithiasis. But if I've got a collaring pregnant female, I must add uterine torsion into my differential diagnoses.
So the general differentials for weight loss and camels, parasitism is always the top of my list. It still remains one of the top reasons why vets see cameli in the first place, regardless of the problem. And obviously this is because heavy burdens will damage the gut.
Nutrients are not necessarily absorbed, even if the animal has great access to good quality nutrition, and the animal feels weak, it loses out on food, and it becomes a really cyclical problem. So parasites should always be checked for, and there's also the possibility of of parasites being insisted or larval burdens, not necessarily showing up in vehicle egg counts, which is why routine and consistency in checking up with parasite burdens is really important. Also, other parasites can cause problems with weight loss.
You know, intense mange burdens can also, you know, cause animals to to feel too weak to actually get up to their feed sources. There's also the possibility of inadequate or inappropriate nutrition. There are camelo specific diets.
Not everyone buys them. And there's also camelo specific supplements. And some of these are fed, sort of on top of a general concentrate ration.
Some are accidentally fed instead of a concentrate ration, so they might have really, really great feedstuffs on on site. But they might not be being fed in the right quantities. So it's important to understand just what's going into these animals.
The same as you would do say, if you were investigating dairy, cow and nutrition, have a good look at what they are feeding and sort of get to know what's going on in different units so you can make good recommendations. There is also the possibility that they have the best food in the world and the best rations in the world. But they can't get to it, and their access to feed can be compromised.
Like mechanically say, the feed troughs are too high for Korea to get their little heads into, or simply there's a herd dynamics issue. And like big, you know, bullish animals are literally scaring subordinate animals away from the feed spaces. So assessing their accessibility is also another thing that you can do, as a vet.
Dental issues. They will always, cause pain, even though the animal might be too stoic to show it. But they can affect things like apprehension of food and obviously mastication of food.
And usually, I would say, if there's an issue with the incisors, and the way that they are aligned with the palate, there may also be an issue with the cheek teeth and how well they are working together as well. So have a look at how the animals eat. And, you know, discuss with the owner as to whether they are maybe dropping food or whether they, have, swellings where they pack food into their cheeks.
It's also obviously part of your clinical exam that you will be feeling down the jaw. They also suffer from sort of enteropathy, and like an IBD type disease where, you know, nutrition could be perfectly adequate, but the guts just in no fit state to efficiently absorb anything from it. I am actually running a study into IBD, so if you do have any animals that are chronically affected by diarrhoea and, and poor weight gain.
I would love to hear about them because they might be able to help us characterise the disease better. Neoplasia is another reason it's always on my list. And, camelo seem to be pretty excellent at getting lymphoma, and it doesn't really have a bearing.
So their age doesn't really have a bearing on whether it's more likely to be neoplasia or not. I've put to sleep animals that have been three months old with very advanced lymphoma. So it's unfortunately always on my list when we have, weight loss or colic in particular.
And then they also suffer from the same communicable diseases as other, farm species like Yoni TB BVD. Just because we don't, hear a lot about it doesn't mean that it's not prevalent. We don't do a lot of routine testing in cameli, so things like this should be on the list if you have cases that are, you know, coming up negative for everything else.
Now I'm gonna go into this in a little bit more detail later, but really, I've tried to break down why animals might lose weight and the things that I consider mainly is is diagnostics. So is there a physiological disease process that is stopping this animal gaining weight or making it lose weight? What are the herd dynamics involved?
Is there a hierarchy at play here? Has something changed in their husbandry? Are they literally being forced away from from their food by other animals?
And also consider their nutrition. So we'll look at those in a bit more depth later. These are the investigations that you can do when you go out to see any sick cameli.
Obviously, you're gonna do a full clinical exam. You're gonna get the body condition score. I would always recommend doing a faecal leg count.
And that would be regardless of whether the owner has been doing their own or sending to an external lab do one as a baseline that you can rely on right away. Not all laboratories are equipped to do cameli faecal egg count testing. So do make sure that if you're sending it off that it's a test that is validated for camels and one that you can actually believe in, sometimes as well.
When we talk about, parasites we we focus really on the helmets, and we don't consider, like the impact that fluke could have. And and coccidia as well. So do consider those other types of parasites in your diagnostic tests.
You need to have a chat about rations, feed, quality, feed requirements. You can get as far as feed analysis, but I really recognise that this is not a first line thing to do. Your nutrition and and the sort of availability of it depends on forage quality.
Some animals don't get the benefit from it. You may be in an area where you know the soil is such that the vitamin and mineral requirements from forage alone are not enough. And that's that's definitely a more in depth study.
But I'm putting it there for the sake of of completeness. We're also gonna be making sure that we do den dental and jaw palpations. So having a feel along, at least you know, outside of the mouth, I wouldn't advocate putting your hand inside unless the animal is sedated and there's a proper a gag in place.
I actually just use for a gag and because there's not a commercial one available for came lids. One of my favourite ones to use is a is an old carving rope, which I have, wound up in electrical tape. And then I've duct tape over that so I can clean it or replace the tape effectively.
And I put that in the mouth, and it serves a dual purpose cos it can be held behind the animal's head, so it holds the head in place, and you can get a little feel into the mouth. But certainly for more in depth dental investigations, you will need to sedate the animal. You can also do radiography if you have that at your disposal, it's definitely worth looking into.
And then for a sick animal, I would always recommend taking blood samples for haematology and biochemistry. Even if you don't send them off right away. You've got the baseline of where this animal was when you first examined it.
But if you are gonna go ahead and take those bloods, please make sure that at the time you do a fresh blood smear, and the reason for this is because we might be looking at something called mycoplasma hemo Lama which I'll talk about in a sec. But basically, that drops off the red blood cells pretty sharpish after you've taken the blood from the animal. So doing it at the time ensures that if they are there, they are gonna be seen in in situ.
And then obviously diagnostic imaging is at your disposal. I would highly recommend just sticking your ultrasound on pretty much anything. So you get an idea of what is normal and even for, like a first opinion.
Lot of diagnostics you can get to know, like the normal diameter of the intestines, for example. So you can see if that we've got any sort of dilation there. You can have a little look for free fluid, and you can assess the bladder fairly easily as well.
I think a lot of people feel some anxiety about blood sampling and came lids it It really isn't as bad as you might think. Yes, indeed. The carotid artery runs fairly close to the jugular vein.
But this is why I tend to go at a 30 degree angle when I'm going into the vein so that I'm not going directly through and I'm reducing the risk of going straight through the jugular into the carotid hematoma formation can happen. And it and it does. They've got very long necks.
But don't fret about it. You can bring down a hematoma with nice pressure. I sometimes, put cold water into a rectal glove with some cotton wool and just make a cool compress and do that.
But what I do, to mitigate the risk of hematoma formation is that I take blood always out of the right size. So you just remember right is right. And that means if you do get a bit of swelling in that region, it doesn't impinge on the oesophagus and make the animal feel like it's choking.
Another potential complication, I suppose, is embolism if you do this, and the best advice I have for that is just, you know, staying calm and reducing the hematoma. That may form as a result of nicking the artery, and avoid it by going at this 3030 degree angle, if you can. That's pretty much it the the the landmarks in the neck really help direct you towards the jugular vein, even if you can't see it.
And it can be really difficult to to see and even palpate in males because they get quite a thick plaque of skin, especially in the distal third of the neck. But if you imagine that the transverse processes of the the vertebrae there, they curve around and then you have the midline, which is obviously where the trachea is. So, in between the trachea and this lovely curvature of the transverse process, the jugular is right in the middle of that.
So the landmarks do actually really, really help you as far as a cameli profile is concerned, you can, have a chat with your lab, your lab of choice to see what's actually involved in the cameli profile. But the I recognise that interpretation can be really intimidating, especially if you haven't done loads of individual animal medicine in the past. So what I would suggest is just, you know, go for the basics.
For now, look at the P CV and the total protein that can help you direct your diag. Your diagnoses or your differentials? At the very least, I would say If the P CV is below 12, then I would be considering a blood transfusion in an animal like that.
And in a situation like that would be, say, an animal's been losing weight doing poorly. You find that it's got a humongous burden. It would be wise to obviously treat that burden first.
But you're gonna try and rectify that anaemia with a blood transfusion. I'm not gonna read off the slide, but you know, there's very various different reasons, for the P CV say being normal and the total protein being high versus low and the same for a low P CV so they can just help you reduce down your differential diagnosis list. It's also really important to note that these animals do not do well with hepatic lipidosis.
And they're not the species that you can necessarily just throw steroids into to try and rectify that, because they metabolise them in a way that can cause hyperglycemia. And a stressed and ill animal might already be a little bit hypoglycemic. So take a look.
At the potential indicators for hepatic lipidosis. You know, these can be lots of different parameters, obviously, like the BH BS and the Neas. But things like bile acids are worth looking into as well.
But don't be afraid to reach out to people. You know, like myself. There's plenty of other Camelot vets, especially in the the Camelot Veterinary Society, that would be happy to help interpret Bloods and help suggest treatment pathways.
If you aren't feeling particularly confident, but often these animals need to be cajoled into eating, and something that I found really helpful for that which is commercially produced for other, animals would be like an off feed sachet. They seem to tolerate that pretty well. But they don't tend to like lots and lots of oral fluids.
So that's when you might be gravitating towards IV fluids and replacing deficits through IV which may necessitate referral when we get into the realms of total or partial parenteral nutrition. So please don't be afraid to refer these cases. If they're not eating, they will die if they do not eat.
And also, as I said before, be wise to do a fresh smear because we're looking for the possibility of mycoplasma hemo lama now end of parasites as I said are the main reason that I see cameli, with weight loss. And they don't always come with diarrhoea. Like I said before, cameli are really adept at absorbing water.
They've got that great spiral colon. So diarrhoea is not often a feature of heavy parasite burdens. They're susceptible to pretty much the same parasites as sheep and goats.
Which is why I don't tend to recommend co grazing. I know that it happens, and I know that some herds are absolutely fine. But it's not something that I recommend just because Camelots don't tend to produce the same sort of tolerance.
Sorry, my dog is barking at me. Tolerance to parasites that say sheep do now. Clinical disease will be therefore manifesting at much lower levels of infection.
And that is why sometimes when you send away to external labs that do not know that it's a cameli, they might advise not treating, And it might actually be a situation. Say, if we've got something like TR Curis that we actually do need to be treating because it is quite pathogenic in Camelots. Signs of parasitism are are listed on this slide you know, it's ill Thrift, weight loss, potentially colic.
Lethargy. Unfortunately, these are the clinical signs of pretty much anything that makes a cameli sick. So it can be quite difficult to rely upon.
They are very, enigmatic. In their presentation of illness, you will be using faecal leg counts. One of the the most common validated tests of cameli would be something called a modified stalls technique.
But as I said before, just check in with your lab and see what they're using and that they know that it is a cameli. Different. Flotation media will help you see the more dense, parasites like aeria mais ansis, which is in the middle here, or the more dense ones like Nematodirus.
Now, I'm pretty sure you probably all know what the parasites are. I've just selected sort of three nasty ones to look out for in came lids. But you know, the ways in which they attack the cameli are much the same as they do in, say, lambs.
You know, Noma Darius is is a lazy egg producer. It it tends to favour the young stock. It is significant even in small numbers.
Hemon is probably one of the most popular ones that Camelot donors talk about and worry about, and it's for good reason. You know, it really is quite a prolific, reproducer. So we can see massive burdens really, really quickly.
But it can be really sneaky, of course, because it's the larvae that are feeding on the animal. And the larva obviously are not producing eggs, so these animals might come up negative on a faecal egg count. But the larvae are already there, consuming a huge amount of blood.
So in this case, anaemia and weakness is is sometimes the first indication that the animal has got a disease because it's got acute hechos. And like I said, tr Curis, it can be really easily missed, due to its density in a standard faecal float, but they can cause disease in low numbers. So it's worth knowing exactly what type of burden you have on your farm, because that's when you know how excited to get about it and where where you would base your threshold for treatment and your threshold for treatment are not necessarily based on numbers.
You have to consider the signal of the animal. You have to consider whether it is growing. Young old, already dealing with a different disease process.
And all of those feed in to how excited I get about different worm burdens. Mycoplasma, hemo llama, is a sort of blood pathogen and blood parasite, if you will, and you can see it here on this MS D photo. It's the tiny sort of purple speckles which essentially leach, the red blood cells in the animal.
And you will if you're not familiar with Camelot blood smears. They have elliptical red blood cells. So they're already pretty fancy, but it can annoyingly mean that they aren't processed terribly well through certain blood machines.
So that's why manual accounts are really helpful as well as the automated ones. Just to check, that the working is correct, but mycoplasma will cause really non-specific signs as usual, like weakness, poor condition. But it also leads to anaemia.
And these animals are in a lifelong carrier state, so you can reduce the amount of mycoplasma in the blood, with oxytetracycline treatment. But in times of stress, this has the capacity to recross, and it's also really important in terms of whether you're using animals for blood donation. Is it worth having them?
PC R checked for mycoplasma before you use them for blood donors for vulnerable animals in the herd, that is definitely worth discussing with owners that you know have mycoplasma on their herd in their head. So there's a couple of weird things about alpacas. I do think or or you know, llamas as well.
I use the terms very interchangeably, but I mean, CTS and I think farm practitioners are really adept at dealing with camelo patients. You know, they have herd problems. They suffer from the same sort of diseases as ruminants, and other livestock species.
But there are a few, you know, nuances that we need to understand when it comes to to cameli. The first one is they have quite a sensitive G. I tract so dys biosis with, you know, different antibiotic courses, et cetera, is possible.
They are prone to hyperglycemia, which is why it's really important to monitor blood glucose, especially if you are going to use steroid therapy in these animals. And they also are pretty good at getting CCN, or thiamine deficiencies. I think sick animals that obviously aren't taking in as much food as they normally would always benefit from supplementation with B one.
And it's something that you can't really overdo. So I think it's really, really sensible to get all sick animals on a B one course or animals that have had long course of antibiotics or heavy worm burdens. And it's really important not to just give one shot of B one.
It needs to be a course, much the same as you would give a course of B one to an animal that's got blindness past the resolution of its blindness and those sort of signs you keep going in in the cameli its past, past resolution of their clinical signs and B one I would usually give at least three times a day. Obviously the doses are in the formulary. Also, when you're dealing with came patients, you're also dealing with their owners, and these owners are often very well set up to deal with nursing care.
In these animals, it's it's a big discussion. If you've got a particularly sick animal or an animal that needs a lot of like remedial care, and a lot of individual attention. A lot of them are set up to do that.
And if they are not, then that's a really pertinent conversation to have, because there's not a lot of point in stressing an animal out doing all this treatment and stuff if it can't be continued, or you're not gonna get good compliance on site. So is that a case for euthanizing the animal, or is it a case for referring it to somewhere where they can care for it? And nurses and students will be available to them?
But for the most part, it is my experience that owners do want to be engaged in in the nursing care of their animals. And an example of this would be, say, an animal that's gone down because it's it's weak, Say it's had a humongous burden. You've done your blood transfusion, you've sorted out the worm burden.
But obviously now it needs to be nursed back to health. It will need to be in somewhere warm and dry. It will need to be somewhere where it's not being bullied.
It will need to be somewhere where its feed intake is being monitored so that all of its mates aren't stealing its food. But also it will need to be lifted. It'll have some physio.
It needs to be turned to make sure that it's not getting any sort of myopathies or neuropathies. If the farm in question is not equipped to do that, or the client is not prepared to do it, then it's a real quality of life issue, isn't it? And also it's sort of pointless throwing all of that resource into it and stressing it out.
So is it a euthanasia or is it a referral? So please feel comfortable having these discussions about what is possible? Because that that is what holistic care is all about.
Now, I don't talk about, parasitology without talking about prevention and management. We are not gonna get scores of new anthelmintic, and we're certainly not gonna get ones that are licenced for using cameli. But misuse of them in cameli is is disastrous for everyone, not least the camelo population.
So we talk about pasture management much in the same way as you would do with any of your sheep clients. We wanna try and reduce contamination in the pasture. That's the best weapon we have against, against parasites.
And that would involve keeping the stocking density down. So we need to drop that down to, you know, a maximum of seven alpacas per acre. We need to do some poo picking.
Now. Owners are actually really well set up for this in this picture. This is called a poo.
And they're very fancy, and lots of owners have them to go and do, pick ups of the poo piles several times a week. This is really important to do because you've got to consider how quickly larvae can develop on pasture. It's a matter of days.
So you wanna be doing this sort of 2 to 3 times a week if you want to make an impact. The beauty of cameos is that they often use poo piles rather than just poo indiscriminately. So it's not an arduous as arduous a task, I suppose, as it would be in other species.
But this is the best weapon we have against contamination. There's also, you know, pasture rotation, rest of pasture. You know, I'm sure you will have your sort of arbitrary timings of pasture rest, you know, at least sort of three months, you know, six months if you can bear it.
Especially if you have particularly sick pasture and then making sure that if you're weaning animals, you're weaning it onto uncontaminated pasture. So please do feel free to utilise the principles that you've learned in other animals, especially sheep, to guide you when you are talking about parasite management with Camelot donors, faecal egg counts, body condition scoring. These are things that owners can really get on board with, and the frequency of the the faecal egg counting really depends again on the animal's job.
If you've got males that just sort of sit around most of the year but are required, for mating season, it's sensible to check them before and after the mating season. So they were you know, before they come into work, say maybe may or June time, you wanna be testing them to make sure that they're all right to go for it. But then, towards the end of the season, when the weather starts to turn, you wanna make sure that they're not carrying any parasite burdens into winter with females.
Obviously, they've got much greater metabolic burdens. So you might wanna be doing them before mating. You might want to be checking them again prior to unpacking after unpacking and again at weaning time, just in case they've picked up any contamination from the youngsters.
And the youngsters are really the ones that get the the pretty decent burdens. So they're the ones that you're gonna be checking, maybe even as frequently, as 2 to 4 weekly, during that intense sort of growth period over summer. But that will have to be on a case by case basis with with your client and working within their capabilities and what is affordable for them as well.
Quarantine protocols are so, so important. Biosecurity. I is a word that is bandied about in the Cameroon community.
But there are times which it falls down, and usually th those times are when they do things like drive by matings. So they will have animals come to a site, specifically for a mating, and they might go home again. Consider the biosecurity of that.
You know, not just from a you know, airborne infectious disease control. But from parasite control perspective, you don't really want to be doing that on pasture. It's probably more comfortable for them to be mating on.
But could you consider maybe using hard standing with rubber matting on it so that everything could be disinfected afterwards? And those animals parasites are not coming onto your farm and being left there when they disappear? And obviously quarantine protocols for any incoming animals, making sure that they are feed leg counted, quarantined away from your stock, and your and your commonly used pastures, and and the utilisation of knockout drenches, if necessary, is quite important.
But, yeah, basically, the management of parasites is very much tailored to what is going on on that farm. And, you know, some farm enterprises are very heavily commercial, and there's lots of in and out and that sort of thing. But some of them are just three pet boys in someone's garden, so your options for for pasture rotation are nil.
But poo picking and stuff may be within the scope of of the owner, just in terms of treatment. If you do have to administer anything that is by injection. I usually use quite a lot of oral antiparasitic drugs, to be honest, but you could be treating them for all sorts of different things.
Medicines can be given subcut and intramuscularly. The only one that I would suggest not going via the data sheet with would be oxytetracycline. I find it's better tolerated given subcut than it is, deep IM.
Because of, sort of injection site reactions. Generally speaking, though, if, say, antibiotics and stuff have a licence for intramuscular administration in other animals. That is how I will do them.
And Klis, because absorption from IM sites is just better. It's got a better blood supply, but obviously everything that you use in a cat lid is going to be off licence, and it will carry a statutory withdrawal period. They're not commonly used as food producers, but some of them are eaten in the UK.
And it is your responsibility to make sure that withhold periods are, discussed with the owner and noted down where I administer with subcut. To be honest, it's wherever I can lift up some skin. The skin is really tightly adhered to the fascia below.
So I favour, like the auxiliary and shoulder region. And with IM, I just remember, front of the back leg, back of the front leg, as depicted in the image here. Now, let's talk about how we build and maintain condition here.
Obviously, we've talked quite a lot about diagnostics. You need to get to the root of the problem. Why is the animal losing condition you can give it all the treatments you want, But if you haven't got to the root cause of the the weight loss, it'll just keep happening.
And that also has implications. When you step back from the individual animal and you look at the herd, what sort of herd management things can I implement to to prevent this happening again? In terms of dynamics, we've got to reduce competition for resources in some situations.
You need to have a look at the dynamics of the animals where they're fed when they're fed. You know, some feeding systems might have the animals on it with a central feed trough, and they're staring at each other while they're eating Now a shire animal or a subordinate animal is not going to want to go head to head with a more dominant animal at feeding time. And sometimes it's something as simple as the animal literally standing AC like sideways across a feed trough, which denies entry into like four other animals.
So consider if you have animals that have different nutritional needs separating them off, even if it's just for feed time, into areas where they can eat their own individual rations. Also feed space goes hand in hand with shelter space. And what I mean by this is an animal's nutritional needs are are greatly elevated when it is cold and wet.
So if an animal is denied access to a shelter, its nutritional needs skyrocket. And these might not be, ameliorated by by the rations, so the rations might stay the same, but obviously needs get higher. So we're in a negative energy balance.
So here we need to have have a literal look at the shelter, and I'll just I'll skip forward so you can have a look at the shelter here. Now you see, this shelter here has one entrance. So if one alpaca stands across the entrance of that, no one else is getting in.
There are some really great ones Where, for example, Here they'll have two. So there's a chance that another animal can slip round the other side, without, being bullied out of the shelter. Now, when we talk about diet, I'm not gonna go into, like, masses and have, nutritional calculations here.
It's quite in depth. But there is a really good module on it in the certificate, if you wanna just take take that as CPD. Basically, what we've got to do to build condition is increase the energy and usable protein in the diet.
We also might need to adjust the fibre. Now, there may be a temptation just to up the concentrates when you've got skinny animals, but this can lead to acidosis. So we want to try and keep the concentrate.
No more than 30% of that animal's intake now, and our packers intake is something like 1.8% of their body weight and dry matter. So if you consider that that's a matter of just grammes, the rest of it has to be made up for with forage and the best sort of high quality, high protein and energy forages I can think of right now would be things that, sustain older horses.
So alfalfa, sugar beets, ready grass, that sort of thing. So it's that lovely short fibre that's much, much higher in energy. And what I will say about sugar beet is it is great for building, condition, but it can actually be a bit, rubbish for their teeth, the same as molasses.
So you can dial it back a little bit, so you don't need to feed the rocket fuel to build condition. I much prefer to do it more subtly with these different types of forages. And there's obviously supplementation as well, if particularly if they are deficient in something like vitamin D, which we will go on to.
So what? I was trying to, illustrate, I suppose by putting these up, is that, I want to emphasise again. You're dealing with a herd problem.
Usually not just an individual. So, just like you would with any other commercial livestock farm, have a walk around. See how these animals interact with one another and recognise also that that can change at different times of year.
They are really flexible in their hierarchy, like, for example, when they've just been sheared. They sort of forget, what everyone looks like And they can sort of freak out a little bit and start fighting. Or, for example, when you're introducing younger males into the the male group, you know, they might have a bit of a pop at them, so they don't always behave reliably and consistently.
And another thing that I will say about bullying, especially among the male groups, is that the smaller groups tend to have more social issues. The larger the group they do tend to be a little bit more harmonious. So that is worth discussing with owners, especially if they end up with, say, one male career from the crop that year.
I mean, what are they going to do with them? They might, discuss maybe trading him with another place. So he's got a big group of males, so that they're not mixing.
That's more pictures that I don't Oh, yes. This is a good picture, actually, for, showing you how you can separate them at meal times, really just something as simple as the hurdles. They go in their specific little slots to get fed.
And that's really good for monitoring animals that need that extra little bit of TLC. Now let's talk really briefly about poor doing animals. This this career is is particularly unwell.
It's got an awful lot going on, and it's got sort of a secondary condition, which will be capitalising, I suppose, on it having a failure of passive transfer. But these are the factors that tend to affect growth. In those young animals.
So obviously the health of CREA is important because that's the animal that you're looking at. But remember that they function as a unit with the dam. So you also need to consider the health of the dam and her ability to feed that baby.
You know, maybe she's got mastitis, and it's something as simple as the baby has got poor feed availability because she's got mastitis, and they both need attention in that situation. There may be some husbandry issues, like we talked about her dynamics and shelter, et cetera. The availability of the foods.
And as I said before, sometimes that's literally a case of when these creo start to explore and start to eat things like Hebrew and CREA pellets. Sometimes the feed space is literally too high up for them to reach. So you might consider, you know, popping in like creep feed areas.
There are certain challenges that, neonates undergo, especially because cameli aren't the most immunocompetence creatures in the world. They are born a gamma globulin anaemic, which is a real mouthful. So certain things that might hold them back would be things like undiagnosed congenital deformities.
Which is why it's always good to get in there and have a little exam when you when you can. A failure of passive transfer. Of course.
They're they're pretty famous for for not not doing so well with passive transfer. But there are ways in which we can improve that through, say, plasma transfusion, sepsis, obviously as a a sequel to failure of passive transfer parasites. With the with the younger animals, they will suffer from the same sort of parasite burdens as young calves.
So you can extrapolate what you know about calves in terms of like, clostridia, not clostridia giardia, crypto, that sort of thing. They they can occur in in Korea crops as well. And coccidia also can massively affect their growth.
Vitamin D deficiency is something that we're going to go through in a in a short while in a in a more case specific context, but generally, like diseases manifest in these babies by their lack of growth. And that is something that you should be encouraging owners to track and then notify you if animals are not hitting their targets And remember, we want them to get to at least 25 kg by six months, they should be gaining at least 250 grammes a day as as neonates. And that gives you, like a good starting point to start tracking their, their growth now weanlings can be particularly problematic, and they are a winter problem.
Because they're getting to sort of six months in the in these colder months in winter time, and we're about to put them through what is probably the most stressful time of their lives. So what? Your owners need to consider when we are weaning is is the parasite management around this time like faecal egg counting at an appropriate interval?
You know, I did say, like, every 2 to 4 weeks when they're in this growth phase, making sure, that they also count coccidia in that, and also considering what sort of pasture they want to to move them on to. Now, there are some different strategies that owners might use for weaning, and they can be quite attached to the one that they are used to. Some of them involve, sort of literally cold turkey, removing the crier and putting them out of eyesight near shot of the dams.
Some will do a more gradual one where they're sort of away for the day and back in for the night. Some will actually take the the dams away and leave like, aunties or barren animals in there. So there's not a massive adjustment for the career that are, I suppose, a little bit mentally immature.
And that can work quite nicely. Because they are effectively weaned because we can't really rely on them to self wean effectively. But get to know your own is different strategies and sort of the pitfalls and bonuses that they they perceive with both of them.
But also, consider the facilities that they're going into, you know, are their feed spaces protected? Maybe consider a creep feed area if they're going into areas where there are adult animals that aren't their parents. Little things like that, really something that I haven't yet touched on would be coccidia.
And this is a huge problem. In in clods, because they do have these particularly, pathogenic species. EE Mac is there sort of under the the B on the on the diaphragm diaphragm diagram.
My voice is, is really letting me go. But apparently so is my brain at this point. Sometimes coccidia can be neglected in client regimes.
I have had instances before when they've done their own faecal E counts and then just sort of forgotten about coccidia. So it really is important to reiterate, that they are important, but obviously not all species are pathogenic. I don't tend to treat, these animals that have higher burdens unless they are particularly clinically unwell, especially if they're adult.
But I would take into consideration all the clinical signs that an animal is showing me in conjunction with this, this sort of count, and counts that I've found have been helpful. To actually show me these more dense coccidia species would be the modified McMasters with, Shea's solution or a modified Stull. Test.
Now, I said I was going to talk. About this particular case, and I wanted to show you a fairly typical presentation of of a call that I often get, in the winter time. And that is crea that are not keeping up with their cohort.
So the animal in question here is a five month old, black waka crea. So, as you can see, it's dark, and it's really, really hairy. And a really good yardstick to measure career progress by is what all of its siblings are doing.
What its cohort are doing because they arguably have the same environment, the same diet, and the same conditions. So why is this one held back more than the others? Now, for the case of an animal like this, Actually, all of its siblings were lighter coloured animals.
Which seem to be more adept at getting vitamin D from from the sunlight. But as you can see, this animal is 18 kg, so it's not quite on track to hit 25 by six months. And I try to narrow down the differentials by asking the owner sort of Is it keeping up with the cohort?
Is it particularly painful? You know, and I and I look at the gates that it displays, I'll walk it round, and often times they're not tracking up particularly nicely with their hind feet. So they're not stepping into their previous footprint.
They might be a little bit stilted, in the back, Or they might just be slightly, tucked up. They can be really, really subtle in this presentation. The more extreme presentations might see a bit of, valgus, whether that's in the front legs or whether it's at the back with tarsal valgus.
But you might start to see some long bone limb deformities in in more advanced cases, and even lumps on the costochondral junctions of the ribs. And oftentimes they're quite skinny. But, you know, in in increasing frequency, I'm seeing these animals with with really, really heavy fleece on the face being overrepresented in in RTs.
Now, the clinical signs again, are are just there on the slide for you. But it's really important as part of a husbandry routine that these animals get exogenous supplementation. Now, the standard dose for this in the UK.
Is 1000 international units per kilo. You will see different dosages coming from different parts of the world. But I would urge you to be cautious with that because they have different drug preparations of vitamin D with different excipients.
So, generally speaking, 1000 international units, maybe 2000 if you've got darker, more prone animals, and that's injected sort of around every eight weeks or so, through the darker months. So that would be like september to April or so. Now, various products are in circulation.
Some legally and some otherwise, so do try to make yourself aware of what is on farm and what you are injecting into animals. There is, a one that we have, secured, like import, rights to which is produced by a company called Betson. And that's that's the one that we're using because it's got, 100,000 international units per mil of vitamin D in it.
But that is available on an S IC. Now, if you want to treat, these animals that have rickets before they get to a stage where it may require surgical intervention, what I tend to do is I double the prevention dose. And I also make sure that I'm giving pain relief alongside that.
I also add in phosphorus supplementation, just to help absorption of that vitamin D. And I will repeat, repeat that in about a month. But I will track the animal's progress.
And more often than not, they they do tend to get better. But then it's obviously it's a herd issue, so you've got to make sure that this becomes routine for the owners if they are not getting better. If those limb deformities are not improving, then surgical intervention, might be warranted.
So do discuss that possibility with the owner. There's loads of different ways to supplement vitamin D. You don't have to inject them.
You can pop it into feed. But I would just be aware that, if you're doing it in, like, a supplemental feed stuff, that might mean that you are increasing the concentrate quotients of the diet. So just be careful that you're not gonna push them into acidosis.
And there's always the possibility that some animals, like, get more of the ration than others. So unless you're really separating them out, you know, I I'm not sure They're always getting exactly what they need. But most Camelot specific feed will already have, vitamin D in it, things like came a libra et cetera.
But But even so, I prefer to make sure that they either get the oral paste, which can be given at a higher frequency than than the injectable or the injectable. And as a vet, if I'm going in, I tend to give the injectable because I know it's in, so that's, you know, pretty helpful for me, to know that it's definitely done rather than with an oral pace that could be spat back out at you. But honestly, whatever.
If it's working for the unit that you're on. That's fine. Now, just quickly before we finish, I just want to talk about tooth maintenance, because obviously this is massive.
For maintenance of condition in the animal now, they don't always need, dental intervention. It's not routinely required. You will sometimes see that, shearers, you know, do the rounds doing this legally, this is not permissible.
It's an act of veterinary surgery to be cutting into these animals. Teeth. So you know, for that reason, I, I would say, assess the need to do it before you go in and do modification.
It's it's actually pretty easily done, under a little bit of sedation with, a Dremel tool or similar, with a diamond blade and a and a diamond. Bur and also at the same time, you can reduce the the fighting teeth, which obviously reduces risk to the handlers and other animals. Now, if you are gonna do incisor trimming, just make sure that you you check the back because, as I said before, if the incisors are out of alignment and they're being allowed to sort of grow unchecked or if they're growing into the palette, for example.
Chances are the cheek teeth aren't gonna be aligned. And you might have to some adjustments there. What you don't want to be doing is making them flat, like millstones.
They do need still to be pointy. But I would advise if anyone does want more guidance on on offering this service. And making sure it's done properly.
Then we are happy to facilitate that. This is a case where you know, he He has a little something going on with his jaw here. So his incisors are coming up way, way proud of his, his palette, his dental pad at the top.
Yeah, there. It's by no means the worst case that I have seen. But here we're not quite sure whether the the palate is pressing down on the teeth and forcing them to grow outwards, or whether it's just the angle of the jaw, you know, that's just his confirmation.
Either way, they do need adjusting because he's not gonna be able to maintain condition effectively. So there's me putting my pony gag in, under a little touch of sedation. Just so I can trim those down and what I'm doing, in the first photograph is I'm feeling like H along his jaw.
I'm feeling for symmetry. I'm seeing sort of what the range of movement is in his jaw. I'm also seeing how well that moves laterally because camels chewing like a figure of eight, formation.
So if they can't do that effectively, they can't chew their food. If they can't chew their food, they can't get the benefit of it. But you'll see here that I've just adjusted those in sizes down a little bit.
There still are gonna be a tiny bit proud of the palate there. But at least he's got the ability now to prehend the food prehend grass, for example, push it against his palate and pull it away from the ground. So that's sort of his ideal.
Really? That's as good as as we're going to be able to make his mouth another quick word just on tooth root and jaw abscesses. These are really common.
You're much more likely to see tooth root abscess in the mandibular cheek teeth. Mainly because they don't drainin, whereas the maxillary ones can can drain pretty nicely. Now, we tend to treat these, in the first instance, with antibiotic therapy, it might be, a a facol.
It might be, a tetracycline. But they they and they can resolve with early intervention. But also, they can develop quite severe bone remodelling and osteomyelitis if they go unchecked, and it might get to a stage where the animal needs to be anaesthetized, and you need to flush out those fistula that maybe form and curette out as much dead bone as possible.
Cameli absolutely love to make sequester. So you need to make sure that you're flushing out and curetting any dead bone out of the way. And the rule of thumb for that is, if it's squishy enough for you to take it out with a little spoon, it's probably dead, and it needs to go anyway.
So do not be afraid to go for curettage. And especially if you have imaging available to you, you can see where the areas of diseased bone and see where the AB cessation has affected. I would ever advise you not to just wait and see when you've got cases like this, because of the the propensity for them to remodel quite permanently and because it is intensely painful, even though they might not show you that they're painful.
But it's certainly worth checking when you've got an animal that's not maintaining its condition effectively, You know, if they don't have their teeth, you know, they're not gonna be adept at maintaining any condition. So that's all I've got to say, really? On winter cameli calls at this stage.
I'm sorry. It was such a whistle stop tour. We could probably talk for a day about it, but I'm more than happy to, and I would just like to highlight the presence of the British veterinary Camelot society.
You may not see this webinar in time to attend a conference, but we are pretty resource heavy, and we are a bunch of enthusiasts. So if you want advice on managing your cases, come join. Or if you want to be part of a community that's exploring, science and you know, making cameli practise more comfortable and mainstream, please head over to cameli vets.org and we can talk more