HISTORY 8

October 5, 2001

Another horrendous week! We did herd health this week, giving all three of the guys their dectomax (worming) shots and giving Kimball antibiotics for his runny nose and giving Forrester antibiotics, ulcer medication, and iron supplement, then giving both of them probiotics to protect the bacteria in their guts. But the other things we were supposed to do are weigh them and clip their nails (if needed).

As you might guess, Kimball gave us very little problem. We were able to give him his antibiotic and probiotic all week, then give him his dectomax injection and check his nails, which didn't need clipping. Then we haltered him and tried to lead him to the scales. Ha. He would have no part of it. After a good deal of waiting and being very patient in spite of our impatience, we managed to muscle him up onto the scale and discovered that he weighs 90.1 lbs. So far, so good.

Then it was Forrester's turn. During the week, we were able to give him his antibiotic, probiotic, iron supplement, and ulcer medications... but he consistently positioned himself to kick us, and did so repeatedly during our efforts to catch and hold him. Finally, on herd health day, I took a wand with me into the catchpen, and every time he kicked at me, I whapped him good across the back legs. Not punishing blows... just enough to let him know I didn't like being kicked. It took twice for him to get the idea and stop kicking. And he hasn't kicked me since then, either! He took his shot with no problem, and then we muscled him up onto the scale... 75 lbs. Sigh. Considering that he's only 12 days younger than Kimball, that's a BIG difference in weight. And he still feels pretty bony.

Finally it was Kirk's turn. No problem catching him or giving him his injection, but there wasn't any way he was going to cooperate with us about picking up his feet to check his nails. I didn't mention it before, but Forrester also wouldn't cooperate about checking his nails. We didn't push it in either event; Kimball's nails didn't need clipping, and we were pretty sure the others' wouldn't, either. But then came time to get Kirk on the scale. No way. Boy, he planted his little feet about 12 inches deep into the ground and could NOT be budged. I tried convincing him the way Marty McGee Bennett showed me... with gentle, intermittent tugs on the catch rope so that he couldn't pull against the rope, but had to try to keep his balance. He kept it all right! heheh!! It was as if he were cast in concrete. We got his front legs on the scale, and that was it. He wasn't even bribable! So we gave it up and estimated his weight at about 100 lbs.

We also did herd health for the females over at the Ciszewski's Almost Heaven farm. No problem with Sheba - Sobata and Sarai were still in Huddleston with Dr. Baum, so all we had to do was Sheba and Rebecca. But Rebecca is as stubborn as Kirk. She reared and fought every inch of the way. When we finally got her into the chute, she still didn't cooperate with us about her nails. Nevertheless we tried giving her the dectomax injection, and her fleece is so thick I couldn't pull it away from the skin far enough to get a good look at where to put the needle. Lee ended up doing it instead, because she's accustomed to doing it and knows exactly where to pull and push. Sigh. I'll learn all this in due time, I'm sure, but sometimes I feel so SLOW! heheh!!

Then there were our other adventures of the week:

Kimball suddenly seemed to take ill. He was drooling clear mucous, making strange "urk" sounds, and on occasion vomiting up a clear liquid. We could not figure out what was wrong with him. He had pretty much stopped eating and was not chewing his cud, although he was defecating a normal stool. We called the vet, but he never called us back.

Rick went out to fetch some hay, and brought it home, and put it up in the upper shed. But then he forgot to close the gate, and all three of the boys got out of the fields. I found out about this when Greta, our German Shepherd, started going bonkers at the door. So I opened the door and heard the alpaca hum... it is a distinctive sound you can't mistake for anything else. I couldn't see the alpacas, though. They weren't in the upper field, but they weren't supposed to be there, and they weren't in the barn. Then thanks to a glint of porchlight off an eyeball, I saw them! All three of them were standing on the road. I immediately went back in and got the wands and called Rick to help. But the guys very calmly turned around and came right back into the pasture. Then we had to get them out of the upper pasture, where we're struggling to grow grass, and into the back pasture, where the shed and hay are. It took longer to do that than it did to get them back into the pasture!

While they were in the upper pasture, Kimball started coughing and sneezing, and I was sure that whatever was wrong with him was only getting worse, but that turned out not to be the case. Apparently he managed to cough up whatever was bothering him, because he began eating and chewing his cud again, and seemed to be alright.

To keep the animals out of the stored hay, Rick erected a temporary orange construction fence around it, thinking it would be enough to keep the guys out of the hay. Ha. No such luck.

Tonight, Kimball seemed to start all over again, drooling, "urk" ing, not chewing his cud, not eating properly, and so on... all the old symptoms. Worried about him, Rick went out to check on him about 8:00 pm, just after full dark. He came rushing back into the house with "Terry, I don't want to scare you, but I need you to come out here right now and hold the flashlight. One of the guys got his foot caught in the construction fencing." We both hurried out to the field, and sure enough, Kimball had managed to tear down the entire fence, somehow wrapping it around his left hind foot. We couldn't figure out how to unwrap it, so Rick tried cutting it with pruning shears. It wouldn't cut. So I held on to Kimball while Rick raced back to the house to get the nail clippers... surely they would be strong enough to cut this stuff!

And they were. It took a good five minutes, because Kimball, of course was scared to death and kept fighting with us about it (we had to keep the foot up off the ground for all that time), but we finally got the fencing cut off so that there was only the little bit that was actually wrapped around the foot, and he wasn't dragging 20 feet of plastic construction fencing behind him. Then came the unwrapping part. Apparently he had caught the fencing between his toes, and in trying to get away from it, had managed to thoroughly tangle his foot in the little mesh (it's only about an inch, maybe an inch and a half mesh). Kimball fought furiously while we were doing all this, but as soon as his foot was free, he sauntered off as if he hadn't a care in the world! Thank goodness, he really didn't have a care in the world at that point!

Rick threw the plastic fencing over the gate into the access road, and we decided to leave the hay exposed for the night. Tomorrow we'll carry the portable cattle fencing panels up there and block it off that way. We can put 2x4 no-climb fencing along the side, and put the portable panel across the top, and that should keep the guys out of there. We hope.

It's been an interesting week on other fronts, too. There was a proposal out to all the members of the Alpaca Owners and Breeders' Association (AOBA) and the Alpaca Registry, Inc. (ARI) to find out whether the members wanted to dissolve these two organizations and form a new one, to be called AOBAR (Alpaca Owners And Breeders Association and Registry). There's been a good deal of bitter battle about it, with the Boards of Directors saying, in essence, "You don't have to understand it. We worked hard on it and you should trust us to put together a good proposal... after all, you elected us." And those opposed saying, in effect, "No, there are too many clauses and phrases that bother us and we don't want to take a chance that those clauses and phrases will be cast in concrete in our organization." There was also apparently a group of people who were mailing lots of members with accusations and false statements about how bad the new organization's bylaws would be, but we didn't get any of those mailings. Other than the bickering on the Alpacasite Email Forum (which I heartily recommend that you join, even if people do get a bit cranky now and then), I heard nothing about this proposal before receiving the ballot. Oh, wait. That's not quite true. I asked Libby Forstner to send me a copy of the Long Range Planning Committee recommendations, which she did, and I looked them over pretty carefully. When the ballot arrived, I was curious about why the proposal didn't include a single one of the committee's recommendations! But I didn't ask because I'm one of the ones who was bothered by some of the language in the proposal and voted no. The proposal was passed by the AOBA membership and defeated by the ARI membership, which I guess puts the lie to the assumption that the memberships largely overlap. The same number of people voted no in AOBA as voted yes in ARI, though, so perhaps the overlap is true to some extent.

In any event, the measure was defeated because the majority of the ARI membership voted against it. I wrote to the BOD members of both bodies, thanking them for their work, and explaining why I voted no. I got a couple of very nice answers back, but they all indicated that since the proposal didn't pass, there wouldn't be any further efforts to merge the two organizations. And one very good thought was that the reason ARI didn't pass it was because many of its members are not in the USA - and they'd have no desire whatever to merge with AOBA! Makes sense to me!

More later...

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