Death defying delivery

Newborn cria Defiant was not expected to survive after his dam, Chugga was diagnosed with a uterine torsion or twisted uterus. But as BAS chair Ron Mackintosh, Redens Alpacas, explains Defiant survived, and thrived.

It was a beautiful June morning and

Chugga was stretching our patience at 368 days gestation, she seemed a bit different and I felt this must be the day when she would birth at last.

I had said that every day for the last two weeks but this time there were subtle changes in her mood in that she seemed slightly different and restless. By midday she had been to the poo pile a couple of times and yet there was still no sign of anything happening. At 1pm Linda said surely this must be the day and yet apart from the appearance of a little discomfort nothing seemed to be happening.

I decided to give her another hour and then examine her at about 2pm feeling that something was just not right. We got hold of Chugga fairly easily in the field and saw that her vulva was swollen. With a veterinary glove and lots of vet lube I started to examine her; instead of being able to gently slide my fingers and hand into her cervix to feel the legs and head of a cria as I expected I found she was quite tight and I felt my hand being twisted to the right in a clockwise direction.

I immediately knew there was a problem and

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thought we were dealing with a twisted uterus. I called Keith Baxter our Westpoint Farm vet who confi rmed a suspected uterine torsion; he told me he would head off to be with us. At this stage Chugga was walking about and occasionally eating grass although she looked uncomfortable.

It was a nervous wait as it took Keith about an hour to get to us. He examined Chugga and agreed we were dealing with a twisted uterus. The fi rst step, was to try and unroll the torsion so Chugga could deliver her cria. Three of us laid her on her side and Keith held her belly as we rolled her from one side to the other, amazingly it did the trick and the twist was sorted. alpaca tends not to struggle; Keith shaved, washed and disinfected Chugga in preparation for the caesarean.

Amazingly she lay quite still while Keith cut into her left side and opened her womb to lift her cria out. Initially the cria looked dead; I opened his mouth pulled out some membrane and used a lamb resuscitator to draw a little fl uid from his lungs. Miraculously he started to cough and breath and we were able to get him going while Keith started to stitch up his mother.

Dam and cria up on their feet

Cria unlikely to survive

Keith made a lovely job of the stitching and soon Chugga was up on her feet looking for her

Now Keith tried to get her cria out but found cria who we named Defi ant. By this time Defi ant that the cria was so twisted it was not going to be was breathing normally his umbilical cord had possible for Chugga to have a normal delivery. been dipped and he was sitting in a cush position. Keith would have to carry out a caesarean in the We all stepped back and congratulated Keith on fi eld and given how twisted the cria was he feared his expert work. It was only then he told us this it was unlikely to survive. was the fi rst time he had performed a caesarean

Keith gave Chugga a local anaesthetic and Linda on an alpaca although he had done it many times and I, together with a vet student who was on a on cows. week’s work experience on our farm, managed After thirty minutes or so Defi ant struggled to to place Chugga on her side. I held her head and his feet and started trying to suckle. Keith gave neck back as I have found in that position an Chugga painkillers and antibiotics and said that as KW Animal Services_Alpaca_JB.pdf 1 23/09/2020 12:39 Chugga may not be able to feed Defi ant we should be prepared to give him some artifi cial colostrum and we would probably need to give him a plasma transfer the next day. However, Chugga and Defi ant had enough of operations and human intervention and he was suckling strongly within an hour.

Chugga kept feeding him normally and no further intervention was needed as he rapidly put on weight just like a cria from a normal birth. With quite a few fl ies hovering about we used Aluspray, an aluminium wound spray which is silver coloured, to protect the caesarean wound although it made Chugga look strange giving her a silver streak down her side.

Over the next few days Chugga had a course of antibiotics and we applied Aluspray to her wound daily for a couple of weeks. Her wound healed normally with no issues and little Defi ant played with all the other cria in the birthing paddock.

Defi ant and all of our cria are halter trained at six months of age and we keep all our boys until they are 18 months before castrating the ones who don’t meet our standards to be stud males. We fi nd lovely homes for these boys who often go to work trekking or have good lives as pets. Defi ant together with three others have recently moved to a beautiful new home.

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