04/28/2024
Helpful tip for shearing days❣️
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Shearing is a stressful experience for camelids. Although it may seem short and relatively innocuous, studies have shown increased levels of faecal cortisol metabolites that are recognised to indicate longer-lasting stress responses 33 hours after the event – it is possible that these remain increased for longer but this has not yet been studied. Why is this important? Well, stress reduces the immune system’s ability to respond to stimuli.
Here’s how the immune system responds to vaccination… When you administer a vaccine to an alpaca or llama, you are relying on the body’s immune response to recognise the vaccine antigens as foreign and to mount an antibody response so that if faced with the infection you’re trying to prevent at a later date, the immune system recognises it and reacts more quickly to prevent the illness. If the immune system is compromised by stress, the response of the body to the vaccine will be reduced so the effects of the vaccine are likely to be less.
So if you want to ensure your animals are capable of mounting the optimal response to a vaccine you administer (ie you want to increase the chances that it works!), separate vaccination-giving from stressful events.
If you don’t know how to give a vaccine, get your vet out to do a batch and ask them to show you how so that you’ll know the next time! And practice handling needles and syringes – you can vaccinate under the skin of a whole chicken before roasting it (try honey and soy!), or if dietary preferences are more vegetarian practice on fruit!
