[AlpacaTalk] The use of blood sugar monitoring in new cria’s
Hello Group, Mike Morack asked me to join this group and share our experiance with testing Alpaca Blood Sugar. I have not reviewed any previous posts so I apologize if this is repetitive.
Rob
The use of blood sugar monitoring in new cria's by Rob and Dr. Joanna Stephens
Disclaimer: I (Rob) am writing this is I remember the situation and circumstances, I'm not the Dr., my wife is.
Last spring we had a proven female give birth. Everything was normal for the dam and cria (a female). About 24 hours later Joanna walked into the barn and the cria was having a major seizure and breathing was in question. Joanna administered mouth to snout and called the vet. While vet was in route we started to cool off cria because she was running a fever, I cannot recall how much. Vet arrived and fluids were administered and seizure subsided. Cria and mom were moved to garage. Cria was blind for 3-4 days. Cria now is perfectly normal at over one year of age.
So what caused this? Examining dam, her teats were engorged and filled with a grey goo (mastitis?). We fixed this with medication and milking the mom, it took a few days to clear up. The root cause determined that although the cria appeared to be feeding from dam she was not getting anything.
We also have barn cameras that recorded the event leading up to the seizure. What it showed that the cria was showing signs of distress but they were unrecognizable unless you sat and watched the cria for an extended period of time. Joanna was walking in and out of the pen with the cria and didn't notice a thing, but when we played it back at 8x speed you can see the cria very slowly moving in backwards circle motion until it seized, this was over a period of 30 min or so.
Which now brings us to the blood sugar check. The rational is in alpacas as in humans, if we don't eat our blood sugar will drop. We use a simple blood sugar monitor devise and a strip, the same ones diabetics use. We prick the ear for blood and run the test just like pricking your finger, it's that simple. If we have any reason to suspect something isn't normal (with milk) we do this early enough in the evening on the first day so that if we need to intervene we can do it and be ready to go to bed at a normal hour instead of doing it just before we are ready for bed.
As a rule we want to be hands off and let the cria and mother bond but we also do not want a crisis, this helps us accomplish both.
So what do we do if blood sugar is dropping? We will first give STAT (energy goo) 3-4 x per day and keep watching until hopefully the mothers milk come in and test accordingly.
Rob & Joanna Stephens
Manitowoc, WIsconsin
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posted by Chaddo at 11:07 AM
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