A Tribute to Beautiful and Sweet Walter

             

Walter

            I dislike giving the impression that there is a lot of death on a farm. The reality is that there is a lot of life on a farm, and wherever on Earth there is life, there will eventually be a passing. All animals, and all people eventually pass.  Of course, we try to keep them alive as long as possible, and we take great joy when they exceed normal life expectancy for their species, and are still well and enjoying living their lives.  In totality, we have been very lucky on this farm and most of our species have outlived normal life expectancy, including a couple of alpacas who died just weeks shy of their twenty-fifth birthdays !   However, there have been a few individual losses of animals earlier than normal life expectancy, and these leave us sad, hungry for more information as to how to treat these animals when they do become ill.  Even with competent camelid vets, alpacas are exotics. In the wild, they hide discomfort, birth and illness so as not to show weakness to predators. This means that even on farms, they may be feeling poorly with no such indication to their caregivers. By the time the caregivers have figured out there is a problem, the disease or disorder is well entrenched and often, according to the vet, is very difficult to reverse at that point. Often, the first indication you might have that an alpaca is in trouble, is the day before he dies.  In addition, this year on the farm, a number of animals are indeed very old, and the price of giving homes to animals forever, is that some years will involve multiple burials and multiple animal funerals.

         Walter joined us from a petting zoo quite a bit West of here, about three years ago.  He has always been a curious and loving individual. He had been a good breeder at his prior home, but we did not have plans to use him in that way.  When his fiber grew in, he looked huge, like a giant walking cotton ball, and sheering him was easy, because he stood perfectly still.  He was not a fan of having toenails trimmed, but he tolerated everything done for him.   He was sick one time, in Spring,  about two years ago when he ate some type of week by craning his long neck over the fence. It made him quite ill as he vomited and foamed at the mouth for a couple of days. Eventually, I found a vet who would come about the time the issue resolved, and we removed any weeds within long neck reach of his fenced area.  He has done well since.

       We were aware that unlike our others, Walter preferred to eat pelleted grain from a dish on the ground, and that sometimes, he preferred it to be sprayed with fresh water before eating. There were one or two episodes of choking I remember over the years.  He has always been energetic and sweet and has been a good friend to other alpacas, the occasional sheep and to our horses.

         His loss was a very big surprise to us.   He joins a large herd that we first established in the 1990s in Heaven.  I believe he has a mother and a sister still living, and a number of male and female offspring.  I believe that Walter was only eleven.  He will be missed.