NUTRITIONAL PROBLEMS 

DON’T KILL THEM WITH KINDNESS

You cannot manage the nutrition of your alpacas or llamas adequately unless you condtion score them regularly.

Alpacas and llamas are bulk feeders, evolved to survive on poor forage in relatively harsh conditions.  This means that they are specialized to eat and digest lots of minimally nutritious forage.  For this purpose they are provided with teeth which are gradually extruded until the age of about seven, and also a skeleton capable of ranging over long distances to get enough to eat.  They have a very long gut tube with a slow passage time to allow efficient extraction of nutrients.  They are resistant to the high mineral levels found in the deep rooted plants of their natural range, and browse (i.e. eat non-grass plants) readily.  Their body condition is naturally lean and fluctuates througout the year depending on food supply and physiological drain, that is to say whether they are burning energy keeping warm, feeding a cria, growing a pregnancy, defending and chasing females or finding food.

Most of us don’t mimic these conditions for our animals.  We tend to keep them in small fields on relatively lush pasture.  The soft, nutritious plants in these pastures provide lots of energy and protein, but less fibre and less bulk than the animals really need, and, being shallow rooted, also give lower levels of minerals than they need, too.  On top of that most of us feed some sort of concentrate in the form of pellets or muesli-type mix.  The nutritional features of these foods are that they are low bulk, high calorie, high starch and protein, and high mineral content.

The Purpose of Concentrate Feeding
The reasons for feeding concentrated foods are (a) to fill in any deficiencies in the diet and (b) because it makes it easy to check and handle the animals on a daily basis.

If your animals are already in good condition, i.e. condition score 3 or more on a 0 - 5 scale, or 5 to 6 on a 0 - 9 scale, they don’t need the energy and protein.  The only thing they need from the supplementary feed is minerals which they may not get in sufficient quantity from forage alone.

The skill in feeding these animals therefore lies in getting sufficient minerals into them without feeding too much concentrate food.  They should always have access to good quality hay to encourage them to keep up their fibre intake.

There are currently two specialist camelid feeds:  Carr’s and Camelibra.  (Others may be formulated in due course.)  As far as we know they are equally good at supplying the all-important mineral supplementation needed especially by breeding females, but Carr’s will also provide more calories, being molassed.  If your animals are inclined to fatness, Camelibra may be the better bet for them, but if they are lactating (milking) heavily and struggling to maintain condition, then Carr’s may be the answer.

Batchelor males and geldings rarely need any concentrate feed. 

Complications of Over Nutrition
The most common of these is obesity.  This can in turn lead to a range of other problems including infertility.  Over nutrition can also cause liver and digestive problems (see later).

Grain Overload
This can be acute or chronic.  The acute form causes a massive rise in the acidity of the fermentation chambers and the animal dies of a toxic acidosis.  The chronic form causes a lower grade long term change in the acidity of the fermentation chambers and produces ill thrift and ulceration of the lining of the stomachs.  Treatment of digestive upsets can be aided by the use of probiotics, preparations of useful bacteria.  These are available in pastes, e.g. the Eggsport “Fast-Track” (available from usefulllamaitems.com) or powders such as Vetrumex, avaiable from your Vet.

Mineral Deficiencies
Copper and cobalt deficiency tend to present as anaemia, although a recently reported case of copper deficiency presented with diarrhoea.

Selenium deficiency causes muscular weakness and possibly sub fertility. It can be treated with Vitenium, a vitamin E and selenium injectable preparation.  Vitamin D deficiency causes rickets (stiff, lame animals, who may just appear “old” and reluctant to move, irrespective of actual age. In growing youngsters limbs will often bend, the so-called “angular limb deformity”.) 

Plant poisoning
Alpacas on long, untopped weedy pasture have been observed to select cow parsley and cut nettles.  Often the rougher and less improved the pasture, the better, although hay should always be available. ( Also, in general, they won’t eat docks, thistles or nettles, and if not controlled by e.g. topping, these could eventually take over the whole pasture.)  However, alpacas kept on just such a weedy, mixed sward have become ill, appearing poisoned, exhibiting malaise, frothing at the mouth, and collapse.  Apparent recovery was followed by regurgitation of gut contents.  Six animals in a group became affected in a similar way.  There was obvious pain, the animals were treated symptomatically with effadryl (a rehydration salt mix drench) and eventually recovered.  The culprit toxin was never identified, so very rough grazing carries a general warning.

There have been reports of toxicity of elder, daisies and hawthorn.  Buttercups are a known irritant.  Rhododendron poisoning produces attempts to vomit.  It has been successfully treated with kaolin (Kaogel) drench.  Since Rhododendron poisoning is normally fatal, this or perhaps another adsorbent, such as bismuth and charcoal, may be worth trying.

It would be expected that grazing of quantities of bracken or oak would be poisonous, but there are no reports of problems at time of writing.  Similarly with ragwort, which may appear in hay especially if made from a weedy sward.

Digestive Disease
The first two stomach chambers which digest fibre rely on a stable chemical environment to work properly.  Animals which are fed too much concentrate feed may well suffer disturbances in the delicate balance of bacteria which are essential to the process of digestion.  This may well in turn place them at a disadvantage in coping with stress.

Ulcers
Ulcers are fairly commonly identified in sick animals, and it’s not really clear whether they are a primary cause of illness or a symptom of a sick animal.  Too much acidity and too little protection of the stomach lining by mucus seem to be associated with gastric ulceration in other species.  We do know that inappropriate feeding, especially too high a level of concentrates and too little fibre, plus chronic (i.e. long term) stress are associated with stomach ulcers in true ruminants.

Ulcers or wrong feeding will not produce evidence of gut damage in dung samples.  We don’t yet have any tests which will give us this information.  Occult (hidden digested) blood is not seen in ulcer cases in llamas and alpacas, even though it is in other species.

Treatment of Ulcers
Ulceration is hard to diagnose in the living animal.  There are some non-specific hints of them in certain blood tests.  Ulceration appears not to occur in animals fed a diet of grass, hay, alfalfa and Camelibra.

There have been reports of ulcer cases being cured by treatment with omeprazole (an antacid drug) and antepsin, and these drugs have been recommended by Vets in Australia.

“Gastroguard” is a horse preparation containing omeprazole, and could be used in advance of a predicted stress to try to protect the stomach from ulceration.

Overstocking  has been seen associated with an outbreak of ulcers, where there was a heavy reliance on concentrate feeding because of lack of pasture.  It’s possible that overcrowding will also lead to extra stress on the animals.