Danny Was Sick, Sort Of

We had a very stressful week - the week that Danny was sick. Llamas and alpacas are the only animal that we have encountered that when they get sick they seem to quickly give up hope. If you don't catch whatever it is in the early stages, then the prognosis seems to be fairly grim.

It started when Danny's eyes got a little mucusy. We weren't sure what that was about, but it seemed to indicate some general level of infection so we gave him a shot of penicillin (which is the only medication we keep at the ranch). It seemed to work and he was fine for the next few days.

During this particular day Danny was fine - usual eating, pooping, playing. After his dinnertime bottle he was put into his stall as per normal. When I went to check on him later that evening, something was definitely wrong. He seemed to be bloated and uncomfortable. This was strange behaviour from a llama! At first I thought that something wasn't right in his stall, so I checked all that out, but everything was fine. As per any baby you go through all of the checklist - have they eaten, have they pooped, did they pick something up, any knicks anywhere (okay, that one may be only relevant to animal babies!). Everything seemed to be fine. Except that in the process of running through everything to eliminate all the obvious signs, he laid down on his side and started thrashing his head about.

In Llamas and Alpacas this is a very bad thing. The Llama normal sitting position, "cushing" is very similar to what you see camels do (they are related) in that they fold in their front and back legs and get up and down in a rocking motion. If a Llama goes over on their side, it is a good indication that something is VERY wrong. The head thrashing is the next sign that something is very bad. If you don't figure out what is wrong very quickly at this point, the opportunities to fix the situation rapidly get worse. Needless to say, I was in a panic at this point trying to figure out what was wrong.

Panicking, but at a loss as to what could be wrong, I picked Danny up and made him stand and forced him to walk around. I was concerned that maybe his intestines were twisted or he hadn't pooped enough or something was wrong internally that would explain the bloating. So I walked him for the next few hours, and massaged him, and talked myself hoarse.

After a while I could hear something working inside his stomach region, but was no closer to figuring out what was wrong. Every time I let him go he would be fine for a few minutes and then down he would go. So we kept at it. And then he got the hiccups. I didn't even know that Llamas could get the hiccups - but that was definitely what it was! And then I thought he was going to throw up. Now I know in other animals that throwing up can be deadly - they are not built for food to come back up that way and llamas necks are soooo long. So then I tried to talk him out of throwing up. Thankfully, that worked but he didn't stop hiccuping.

To make a really long evening short, he eventually stopped hiccuping. I think he had some gas because he relieved some of that in the natural way. So by about 3:00 am I was thinking that he had stabilized to an extent. He wasn't going over on his side anymore, so I was semi-hopeful. I put him back in his stall and went to mine.

Next morning he was fine and it was like the previous night had never happened, except I had the bags to prove it.