Alpaca Farm Under Attack
One Farms Battle with Haemonchus contortus
Last year we found our farm under attack! It was time for our normal farm day where we weigh all of the alpacas, give them their monthly meningeal worm protection, and check toenails etc. We started with the weights and I was noticing that almost all of the animals had a weight loss. About that time my husband called out a weight for the next animal and as I marked it on his chart I realized that this animal had lost almost 10 pounds since last month.I finished checking everyone and came in to call the vet. The next morning I brought in several fecal samples & my fellow with weight loss. By noon I had a call that we had a pretty heavy load of brown worms & our fellow was very anemic from it. Vet said don’t worry no big deal just start them on Panacur (Fenbendazole), use your Camelid dose, and go on and run it for 5 days. Plus he wanted us to give the boy with the anemia some Red Cell to help.So we did as instructed and I returned to the vet a week after the worming with new samples. He called me later in the afternoon and asked what dose I used the panacur at. I told him 20mg/kg. He said, “The worm eggs seemed completely unaffected, and he was very shocked.”It was decided that we would repeat the same dose of panacur on the females and young and we would use Valbazen on the males. So we repeated the worming and waited a week and took in samples. The vet called again and said, “We didn’t even reduce the population”.
It was at this point I ordered my microscope as I had to see what we were up against and taking 8 fecals to the vet every 10 days was getting costly.
By this time another month had gone by and it was time for farm day again. We had been adding lots of extras to help boost the animals from this worm load including red cell for our anemic fellow, Beet pulp, rice, and electrolytes. Some of the animals were gaining weight; most were just holding their previous weight. We also did a check of their eyelids and gums to look for anemia, all checked out good an no further weight loss was noted. However we still have this heavy worm load. The vet had asked for a few days to do some reading and I was frantically reading as well.
Now another 10 days had passed since the farm day and I noticed one of our females laying down a lot. I checked her tissue and to my astonishment her gums were completely white and there was absolutely no color left in her mouth. I weighed her and she had lost 15 pounds in those 10 days. I called the vet. He came and ran blood work which showed severe acute anemia. I remember checking her mouth the first time just 10 days before and it had great color, nice and pink, and she was doing fine. The vet called back late that night (I could tell at this point it was worrying him as much as it was me), and he told me “If we don’t find something to get these worms they are going to kill your herd!”
He asked me to contact other farms and see if anyone else had similar trouble. What I found was that a lot of farms were having a similar problem, Wormer resistant brown worms (stomach worms/ Trichostongylus).
I started e-mailing and reading and received a ton of help from several llama farms. It would appear from all the information I collected and also from the fecal samples that we had haemonchus contortus or the barber pole worm. A completely evil little worm they are very tricky, the adult worm climbs the blades of grass in the mornings and sits on the top off the grass waiting to be eaten. If the heat of the sun comes and they are still there they crawl back down and wait until the next day to try for a host again.
Our usual wormers were not affecting them at all we had now used Fenabenadole, Dectomax, Valbazen, and none had even reduced the population. I would like to point out that Haemonchus look like any other trichostrongyle for the most part and most brown worms/ strongyles are not wormer resistant.
The Haemonchus contortus is no ordinary worm with females that lay 5,000 + eggs a day, not only is their rate of reproduction incredible but they can cause blood losses in excess of 1 cup a day per animal leading to a very rapid onset of anemia in the host.
I would like to stop here and say that we rotate our pastures regularly, we are not over stocked, and we have always been very consistent on doing fecal samples and watching for any worm load in our animals. Until the time of all of this our vet had only ever found 1 tape worm in our alpacas. So even under the best of circumstances a farm can quickly come under attack.
After talking to several llama farms and about 10 goat farms (apparently these worms are a very big and common problem for our fellow goat farmers). We were told by all that responded to use Moxidectin/Quest gel for horses. Well as with many of our alpaca medicines this wormer would be an off label use. I was given the correct alpaca dosage from a llama farm and told that they had safely used it on pregnant and young alpacas.
I talked at length with my vet and he concurred that this would probably be a safe course of treatment and we had to do something and soon. He brought by some epinephrine incase there was a bad reaction. We did not really want to start with the ones that were already super weak incase the wormer was going to be a problem. So I picked a gelding, told him I loved him, and he had to be strong for the rest of the herd. I gave him the Quest gel and we watched him for 24 hrs. The next day all was good with our test fellow so we began by worming a few more of the males.
We decided to wait and see if the wormer even worked before doing any pregnant or young animals. We rechecked fecals on the 5 day and what a relief when we got negative results or only 1-2 eggs per slide. Now it was time to worm the pregnant females and the youngsters. I remember being so nervous making sure the dosages were correct (as moxidectin can be lethal at even slightly too high of a dose). We repeated the worming in 14 days. You should always make sure that you are using the correct dosage of Moxidectin, too much will kill the animal, too little will create a new resistance to the wormer!
By now I had split my herd into the have and have nots, doing fecals almost every day. When an animal had 2 negative fecals I moved them into a clean pasture. I am so pleased to tell you that in the end we did not lose any animals and everyone has fully recovered. I am also so pleased that our fecals are back to negative and we are worm free once again.
However I am much wiser now, I know they will be back, I look for them every month, I will be ready for them next time and they will not get to my animals before I get to them.
We also will not jump into the Moxidectin, it is now our secret weapon, only for use in times of resistance.
I have found having our own microscope to be invaluable. I do not know how we ever did without it, and I recommend one for any alpaca farmer.
- Please remember I am not a Veterinarian and you should always consult your veterinarian in times of trouble. Do not use any medication on your animals without discussing it with your veterinarian first. We work hand in hand with our Vet to keep our animals healthy and safe.
I was so lucky during all of this to have my vet by my side. Both him and his staff took extra time teaching me to read fecals and showing me different samples. I wanted to pass all of this information onto all of our farms so none of us ever get caught by the Haemonchus in the future!
Good luck and good health to you and your alpacas!
