In spring of 2007, a friend of ours became aware of 6 alpacas and 1 llama in need of a great deal of help due to major neglect. With the approval of a local Animal Protect League, this friend called her friends together to help these poor creatures. The group of animals consisted of 1 adult female llama, 1 intact suri male, 1 intact mixed breed male, 3 adult suri females and 1 cria. All of the alpacas were emaciated.

The dam of the cria was still letting her baby nurse. They all had mites and other skin conditions due to overgrowth of fleece and living in their own feces and urine. Another friend was kind enough to offer her barn and farm as housing for the rehabilitation that needed to take place for these animals to survive. Our first mission was to get the fleece all off so we could get a good look at just how bad things were. Most
of the fleeces had to be hand cut off as the electric shears couldn’t cut through. Then all of them were wormed with Ivomec and Safeguard. We spend hours working to remove ½ inch thick scabbed areas of the skin so that the skin could be treated with a sulfur wash to kill the mites. Without removal of these scabs the medicine would not have reached where the mites were living. Corid was also added to their drinking water. Each was weighed and body scored. Most scored between a 2 and 3. The only one that had good weight was the llama. We think that with her size that what little food was available she was able to keep the alpacas from getting much. Ultrasounds were also done on the females to make sure we weren’t dealing with any pregnancies. Thank goodness we weren’t.