Unexpected Loss
I have a love hate relationship with my barn cameras. I love the fact I can watch the alpacas from my “day job” and see what they are up to. I hate that I can see when they are in trouble and am helpless to do anything about it.
Tuesday I noticed my moose of an alpaca, Miracle, in trouble. From the stop motion images I received from the cameras it looked to me like she was colicing. She was up she was down she’d roll on her side, bob her head and generally look really uncomfortable. I made a call into the vet and worked out an arrangement to pick up some banamine on my way home just before their office closed.
After several agonizing hours watching her I finally got home with drugs in hand. I opened up the barn door and was sickened by what I saw. My girl Miracle was not colicing at all in fact it was much worse. She refused to put weight on her right hind leg and held it tenderly in the air. She was obviously in pain and I gave her the banamine to help with that. Examining the leg I noticed her knee was 3x the normal size and not even remotely resembling the shape of a knee should be. My heart sank, I knew immediately what the outcome would be. Because of the late hour all I could do was make her as comfortable as possible and keep her alpaca friends close to her for comfort and security until I could get the vet out in the morning.
Poor Miracle now runs and plays at the rainbow bridge among all the other great alpacas who have left this world. She was a great girl and our happiest alpaca. The markings on her face always made it look like she was smiling and I’m sure she was. She loved to play in the water buckets and bask in the sun. She was perfectly comfortable with her human friends and wouldn’t bother getting up from a nap just because we wanted to mow the pastures. Instead she’d watch us go by (within 6 inches sometimes) and then was smart enough to reposition herself onto the freshly mowed grass so we could continue mowing. She was a sterile alpaca and instead all that energy went into her size. She weighed in well over 200lbs making her look more like a llama in size than an alpaca. Unfortunately it was her over sized frame that the vet seems to think lead to the failure of her knee.
Miracle, you will be missed.
