New Babies: A Learning Experience

By Kristi Murdock

I bought our first llama, Rosie, about a week before she had a baby.  That was June of 2001, and it was November before I finally got my act together enough to bring Rosie, baby Marguerita and Footloose the gelding home to the farm.  So, while this spring’s babies aren’t technically our very first, they are the first ones I was “in charge of” if things went wrong.  And things did go wrong, but they could have been much worse, and everyone is doing well today.

 Still, I thought it might be interesting for other llama owners to hear about our two cria whose births went so well, and then… we had problems.

 Experienced mother Daisy was only been bred once last year, in a supervised (“hand”) breeding, so we knew that she was in day 363 of her pregnancy when she went into labor at 9:45 a.m. on May 13.  I was in the pasture with the girls when Daisy began to hum rhythmically, kind of like a digital alarm clock.  She made an unproductive trip to the poop pile, cushed and then got up.  Having read the books (okay, practically memorized the books), I knew these were the signs I’d been waiting for!  Daisy produced a nose and two front feet within 20 minutes, and, 25 minutes later, delivered a female cria onto a packing blanket I’d spread over the gritty, sandy area near the barn.  The placenta came soon after.  I got Daisy some grain, and she allowed me to apply Nolvasan solution to the navel of the new baby, determine that she weighed 23.4 pounds, give a Bo-Se shot, and find out that her teeth were all erupted, her ears were up, and her toenail booties were beginning to dry and come off her feet.  According to the flowchart, the birth had been “textbook” and I had what appeared to be a full-term, normal cria to celebrate.  I called my husband and pretty much anybody else I could think of while the baby dried off a bit and got used to the world on this gorgeous, sunny, breezy, perfect May day.

When my husband came home for lunch at noon, however, I was beginning to get concerned.  The baby wasn’t able to get to her feet.  She could almost make it, but then would fall back to the ground.  We decided that she needed some strengthening, so we helped her get up, and held her near the udder.  She wasn’t strong enough to stay on her feet for long, though, so we knew no sustained nursing was going on.  Dang it.  Maybe she just needed a little more time.  I helped her to her feet several times as the afternoon wore on, and was pleased when the baby managed to stumble up into the grassy pasture after her mother.

At about 3:00 p.m., 5 hours after her birth, I finally saw the baby get up by herself.  Yay!  By now, however, I was beginning to wonder about Daisy’s dairy bar.  It looked like the baby was trying each nipple, but she was obviously frustrated at her findings.   I grabbed the baby and we headed down to the barn, and popped Daisy into the chute.  Here I learned that my llama milking skills were woefully inadequate.  Nonetheless, I didn’t think Daisy had any milk, although her udder was pliable and not hot.

At the time, I hadn’t been able to find a good llama Vet nearby, and the fellow we relied on is an hour away and usually pretty busy.  Fortunately, I’ve made a wonderful friend in Pat Greenley of Sheer Pleasure llamas.  Pat is experienced and had been tracking my llamas’ daily progress throughout their pregnancies, so I called her, and she immediately offered to drive the 40 minutes to come and help, bless her heart.  In the meantime, my assignment was to round up some Oxytocin and some whole milk.

As I paid for the milk at the convenience store, I made a chilling discovery… the small syringe of Oxytocin I’d gotten from the Vet was no longer in my purse!  I frantically scouted under the store fixtures, but couldn’t find the syringe, anywhere, and so began a breathless explanation to the clerks that, should someone find a syringe, they shouldn’t panic, it wasn’t drugs, well it was but not that kind of drug…  Just then, a gentleman burst into the store with the news that “some punk dropped his needle out front!”  Flapping my lips shut, I grabbed my milk and hustled out, snagging my still-intact Oxytocin shot from the sidewalk.  Whew! [note -- this could have been so dangerous for someone.  Please learn from my carelessness and never do anything this stupid!]

The Oxytocin didn’t do any good.  Pat suggested that we feed the baby some llama plasma in order to attempt to get some immune support into her during those critical first 24 hours while her digestive system was still able to absorb it.  The baby suckled the thawed plasma eagerly in two feedings.  Pat worked out a feeding schedule with me before she headed home at around 8:00 p.m.  Somewhere along there, the baby had been christened “Spot,” at least temporarily, since she was the all-black baby of two loudly appaloosa parents!

At 9:00, we began feeding Spot warmed whole cow’s milk, offering 8 ounces that she quickly drank every two to three hours.  The schedule was brutal – I don’t know how those of you who have bottle-fed, or worse, tube-fed, for weeks manage to survive!  I was very lucky in that Spot began to refuse the bottle at the midnight feeding on the second night – it appeared she was getting milk from Mom, after all!  Hooray!

The Vet came the next day and took blood for an IgG test, to see how Spot’s immunity levels were looking.  The results were not good – the score was less than 200, where 800 is considered to be “average.”  So the Vet came back a few days later to do an intraperitoneal plasma transfer, and again in a couple of days to retest Spot’s level.  This time, it looked as though she was close to the 800 mark.

After her first refusal of the bottle, Spot continued to reject it for three days.  Twice-daily weighings showed that she was gaining, but not the pound a day I hoped for.  Finally, on the fourth day, Spot once again began to drink from the bottle.  She continued to drink anywhere from 2 to 44 ounces a day for the next couple of weeks.  At Pat’s suggestion, I had begun supplementing Daisy’s grain ration with some Calf Manna, in hopes of increasing her milk production.  She got about half a pound a day initially, and this was then decreased over two weeks since it contains higher levels of copper than are advisable for llamas long term.

On the morning of May 31, I glanced out the window to see Rosie escorting another new arrival down to the barn.  Tricky Rosie had given no hint at morning feed that this, what was probably her 365th day of pregnancy, was the day, so I missed the whole event, but estimated that the baby was born at around 9:00 a.m. in the grassy field.  The placenta was also there, and Rosie was glad to have a snack and let me dip the navel, weigh the 26 pound baby, give a Bo-Se shot, and determine that her teeth were all erupted and her ears were up.  The baby had a small umbilical hernia, but my real concern was that she seemed to be quite crooked, with her right hind “knee” pointing out at 90 degrees from her body.  She also was completely down in her pasterns.  Of course, I called Pat!

Pat and Don Greenley came down to see the little girl that afternoon, and reassured me that many llamas seem crooked at birth.  Rosie obviously had an udder full of milk, and we saw the baby suckling vigorously.  Later that evening, after Don and Pat had gone, I saw the baby straining over the poop pile and administered a children’s Fleet enema.  I saw her pass meconium almost immediately, and more about 20 minutes later.  After about an hour, I put Rosie and the baby into the inside stall, and went to bed, confident that all was well this time around.

The next morning, however, I discovered that the baby’s bottom was completely soaked with watery diarrhea.  The baby seemed very weak and no longer held her head up, but let it droop to the ground most of the time.  I watched for an hour, but didn’t see the baby nurse; holding her up to the udder, she was able to nurse a little, but didn’t have the strength to hold her head up for long.  Once again, I called Pat.  She came, this time with her tube-feeding equipment.

(Left) Spot" greets newcomer "Squirt" to the farm

We knew that the baby should probably have an anti-diarrheal medication, but couldn’t find the appropriate dosage in our books.  We finally decided on 6 cc of Kaopectate.  We also began tube-feeding the baby whole milk.    The baby continued to have explosive diarrhea for several hours, and between that and injecting the milk and a second dose of Kaopectate into the other end, she was christened “Squirt.”

Finally, at around 5:00, we decided that Squirt just didn’t seem much better.  It was Sunday, of course, and we couldn’t reach our llama Vet.  I called most of the large-animal Vets in the area, and got a sort of consensus that Squirt should be given antibiotics and electrolytes rather than milk.  One terrific doctor (now our new local llama Vet!) who only lives about 5 miles away offered to leave a couple of doses of Naxcel and some electrolyte mix in his mailbox as he headed out on a horse call.

We administered a dose of the antibiotic and began to attempt to tube feed 4 oz. of electrolytes every four hours.  Tube feeding terrifies me – I am so afraid of something getting into the lungs and causing pneumonia.  At least once, the liquid in the tube backed up immediately – apparently, we were trying to add liquid to an already full tummy.  The good news was that, by 9:00, we were no longer seeing the gassy diarrhea.

It was a tremendous relief the next morning to call the Vet and find that he could come out around noon.  In the meantime, I thought the baby seemed a little stronger.  She wouldn’t drink from the bottle at all, but did nurse from her Mom just a little bit.  The Vet said we should be very encouraged that Squirt was urinating, and that she was able to stand and walk around, albeit with her head hanging down.    He put a catheter into her neck, and administered 500 ml. of fluids.  He switched us from a daily injection of Naxcel to NuFlor, which is a little bit more gut-specific antibiotic.  His diagnosis was scours from E. Coli, although he did suggest we give an additional 1 cc of Bo-Se, just in case it was White Muscle Disease.  Another Vet suggested via e-mail that there may have been a reaction to the ingredients in the Fleet enema.  We never really knew for sure.

The next four days were difficult.  According to my husband, Squirt was a little stronger each day, and her “crookedness” was pretty much gone, but I wanted her to be better NOW.  Finally, on May 6th, I was able to record that Squirt looked even to me like a normal baby, jumping and running, with her head in the air.  She still had a dirty bottom much of the time for her first two weeks – possibly the “self-limiting diarrhea from rich milk” that many folks have told me about.  Between watching the pregnant llamas bottoms for “signs” before they had the babies, and examining the babies’ bottoms for diarrhea for the next month afterwards, I think my llamas are all convinced that I have a very unhealthy anatomical obsession!

I was really surprised when Squirt’s IgG test scored over 800 mg/dl, as I was sure the diarrhea would have emptied her system of milk as fast as she could nurse it.  Rosie must have provided some high-quality colostrum right away.

Rosie had LOTS of milk.  During the period when Squirt was too weak to nurse and was drinking the electrolytes, we had to milk Rosie several times to make her more comfortable.  Thus, I wasn’t unhappy to see Daisy’s baby, Spot, begin to nurse from Rosie, alongside Squirt, on May 7.  Regular weighings show that the two girls are both gaining as they should, and Rosie, bless her heart, seems generally amenable to the situation.  Spot has since completely rejected the cow’s milk in the bottle in favor of The Real Thing.

During all this, I became fascinated by the IgG testing process, and so have put together a companion article about how that’s done for other clueless folks like myself.  In the process, I learned that Spot’s second test results were not as high as we thought they were, and so she has been given a CDT vaccination at 1 month of age, a month sooner than we usually would have done it.  The third time was the charm, and our final baby was born on June 12 (day 366) without incident.

 Things I learned:

1. I really do need to have all the emergency supplies on hand – I didn’t have frozen plasma, antibiotics, a kit tube-feeding, electrolytes, IgG test supplies, colostrum/milk replacer… I was lucky that Pat Greenley was close by with the plasma and tube-feeding kit, and I was able to obtain the rest of the stuff in time.  From now on, though, those things are regular supplies around here.
    

2. Llamas are exotic animals.  You can’t just pick up the Merck Vet Manual and get dosages, diagnoses and treatments for them, nor can you expect most Veterinarians to have any expertise.  I was darned lucky to have an experienced breeder to come and hold my hand throughout all of this, and a good llama Vet on call.  When it comes to crunch time, though, you are going to be a lot more “on your own” than you are with most other animals.  Frankly, this new llama owner should have figured this out when she decided to get her llamas, not in an emergency two years later.
    

3. The guideline of a 350 day gestation given in The Books is… less than reliable.  One Vet heard the story of our two cria and said it sounded to her like they “cooked too long,” but that they regularly see twelve to twelve-and-a-half month pregnancies with spring babies.  Yikes!
    

The Books do provide a word for what we saw – babies that were obviously full term based on weight and the majority of their condition, but who exhibit some characteristics of a premature cria: Dysmature.   Since our experience, I seem to have heard about a lot of similar cases this spring.  I queried one of the Vets at Ohio State University and she said that she also felt there was a larger-than-normal incidence of dysmature births this spring, although she had no idea what might be causing it.  Hmmmmm!

Copyright 2003-2010.  All rights reserved. 

Originally published in the Iowa Llama Association newsletter, July, 2003, and so may be republished in LANA Newsletter Network member publications with appropriate statement of origination.