Fight For Your Dream (20 page)

Menagerie

Over the following years the number of alpacas increased, and so did the rest of my animal collection. My alpaca herd now totalled one hundred and twenty five animals, plus three llamas. Bodie and Doyle, my cats, and the ‘Three Amigos', as I lovingly referred to my three dogs, Bracken a black Labrador, Bramble a yellow Labrador and Chico my long haired Chihuahua.

I had also somehow managed to collect forty-two ducks, two geese, fifteen chickens, seven goats, one Kune Kune pig, two micro pigs, two turkeys, twelve sheep, and my two wonderful horses Prince and Nimbus (yard names). Not bad, hey? Oh, and by the way, six horses on livery. I was forty-seven, and in 2010 Nigel was nearing his half century. Nigel had always said that he wanted to retire at the age of fifty and, unbelievably, that time was rapidly approaching. Nigel had broached with me the possibility of me retiring at the same time but, being nearly four years his junior, I was adamant that I was too young to retire. Apart from anything else I didn't feel ready. However, Nigel was more than ready. He'd been running his own business for thirty-three years, and was looking forward to the prospect of an easier and more relaxing lifestyle. Reaching your half-century is quite a milestone in anyone's life so, with that in mind, we decided that it should be marked with a celebration and, of course, Nigel was also retiring, so it was a double celebration. The venue was one of our favourites: a small Italian restaurant, which we frequented quite often. In fact, the restaurant is so small that I rented out the complete first floor. Everyone had a fantastic evening; we even carried on the party back at our house until the early hours.

The farm was by now very well-established. It had expanded beyond recognition and, as with all businesses, the bigger the company the bigger the concerns. I was beginning to experience some of the pitfalls first hand. My staffing levels had obviously needed to increase, and my feed bills had also increased dramatically, as well as the variety of feedstuffs for the different species that I now owned. Considering I had always imagined Mayfield Alpacas to remain a relatively small concern, it was increasing at quite an alarming rate. I can remember the reality almost struck me overnight. Fred was now employed full-time on the farm, and it wasn't long before he became my right hand man, with the title ‘yard manager'. I suppose over the years I have tended to lean on Fred more and more. I respect Fred, and his opinion matters to me a great deal. I'm also a big believer in two heads being better than one. Without a doubt, we've certainly had our fair share of laughs along the way, and yes, we've had some tears.

The early autumn of 2012 saw the beginning of a farmer's worst nightmare!

The summer had been a very wet one, and the grass had struggled to grow in the volume we would normally expect. To make good haylage we needed three days of hot dry weather to cut, turn and bale the crop. Nigel constantly trawled the BBC five-day forecast looking for a fair-weather window in the damp, gloomy weather. Eventually the forecast predicted some sunshine, and we instructed our contractor to cut the crop. We were now committed! All seemed to be going well until the final day, when the crop had been baled, but was still yet to be wrapped. The first warning sign was the noticeable difference in the wind strength. As the breeze picked up the skies darkened. I glanced skyward and was immediately greeted with several droplets of rain falling onto my face. ‘Oh no, not now,' I groaned. ‘Please, not now'.

Half of the crop had by now been baled, half had not. Time was of the essence.

Once again the forecast had got it wrong. Lady luck was just not shining on us that day, and instead bad luck was. The heavens opened and, for the following two hours, boy did it rain! All in all it had been a frustrating day. On the one hand we were relieved to have finally completed the wrapping, but on the other hand we couldn't help wondering just how detrimental the decision to continue wrapping might be in the future. There was no way of knowing now. Only time would tell, and it certainly did. The winter started early that year. Bitter cold winds and rain constantly battered the counties, causing chaos and havoc in every corner of the country. Major damage was caused by catastrophic floods, hailed by some as the worst in living memory. People's lives were turned upside down by the freak weather conditions, just as I was about to experience the toughest and most heartbreaking six months of my farming career.

It was one day in October when it started. In the winter months I have always housed my girls in the barn at night; this year was to be no different. The boys, however, had wintered out in the paddocks for some years now, where they all had access to large, well-equipped field shelters.

My philosophy for this was that the majority of my girls would always be pregnant over the winter, so required a little more TLC. After all, the girls had to cope with:

1. Being pregnant
   
2. Growing a foetus
   
3. Feeding a cria from the summertime
   
4. Requiring much more feed and energy just to stay warm, let alone considering all what their bodies were coping with.
   

The barn is airy and well-ventilated, with a variable permeable membrane on the inside, providing the unique system of staying warm in winter but cool in summer. Perfect, it had worked well for the past sixteen years. Why then should I deem this year to be any different? The fact is I didn't.

Hard Knocks

Sadness and bad luck for me, as long as I can remember, come in the months October, November and December. I dread those months in advance. It's also inevitable with farming that when you have livestock you get dead stock, even if like me you do not farm on a commercial basis for meat. I would estimate on a yearly basis you may lose around 7% of your herd, less if you are fortunate, but 2012/2013 saw a terrible loss of alpacas for me. One by one my animals were becoming seriously ill, and I didn't understand why; to be honest, neither did the vets. The symptoms were loss of weight ultimately leading to emaciation, lethargy, difficulty in standing and then death. The situation continued throughout November and December, with more and more of my beloved alpacas dying.

For many of them I took the decision to end their suffering in the kindest way I could. This came in the form of a lethal injection to put them to sleep gently. I sat with every single one of them in my arms. Cradling them, I would stroke their faces and tell them that everything was going to be alright. I told them how much I loved them. I thanked them for saving me, and they responded by humming back to me. I kissed their faces while their beautiful eyes looked into mine. Their gorgeous eyelashes, almost damp with tears of their own, blinked a simple trust that I shall never forget as long as I live. ‘Sleep well, my darling,' I whispered, and then they were gone. The thought of them being cut open for the post-mortem exam at the lab made me shudder. I couldn't even give them a dignified goodbye! It's difficult to describe, but the hurt and sadness I felt, and still do, goes far beyond what one would expect from the normal loss of one's pet.

No, it goes far, far deeper than that. They are in my soul and will remain there forever more.

On Saturday 7
th
January 2013 I received another massive blow. It was around 9.30 am. I was upstairs on the mezzanine floor preparing Bracken's and Bramble's breakfast, when the familiar tune of my mobile phone rang. I rummaged through the several layers of thermal clothing, before the person on the other end of the phone got fed up and put the receiver down. ‘Damn the winter,' I thought to myself, as I pulled out my mobile. The screen on my mobile showed, ‘Helen - vet' calling. Hurriedly, I pressed the recall button and waited anxiously for Helen to pick up. ‘Hi, Helen, sorry about that, couldn't find my mobile quick enough'. As Helen spoke, I could feel a cold sweat sweeping through my body. I stood motionless, asking her to repeat what the latest implications meant. ‘Elaine, I'm afraid I've got some worrying news from the lab. They've found some suspected TB lesions'. Forty minutes later I pressed the ‘end' button on my mobile. I'd heard all I needed to know for now. I stared across the staff kitchen to where I'd walked, trying to comprehend what I had just been told: DEFRA, movement ban, possible herd cull. ‘No, no, surely not? This can't be happening, not to me, not to my alpacas. I put their health before mine. I love them too much. There must be some mistake'. The irony of it though, was that it was happening to me and my alpacas. Tuberculosis is a chronic, granulomatous, bacterial, infectious disease, characterised by the development of tubercles (small avascular nodules containing giant cells) in various organs of the body. Recently, there has been an upsurge in cases, made particularly bad because many strains have become resistant to medication. It is a serious problem in immunocompromised individuals, (very similar to me with Lymphodemia and infection). Lesions are commonly found in the respiratory and digestive systems, and excretions and secretions may be contaminated with the organism. Infection may be acquired by inhalation or ingestion.

Three days later I received a letter of notification informing me of the ‘movement ban' that had been enforced on my farm. Basically, I was restricted to the movement of animals on or off my farm for the foreseeable future. For me there was further agonising news in that we would have to wait fifty-six days for these suspicions to be confirmed. Apparently, TB takes a great length of time to be cultured; hence we had no choice but to sit and wait. The anxiety didn't stop there though. It seemed like every day we had another alpaca exhibiting similar symptoms. Most days I dreaded walking onto the farm in fear of what I might find, and I openly admit to purposely waiting until Fred arrived before me; it was heartbreaking. I owe so much to Fred over those very difficult six months. He was a real mate for me to lean on, and without his understanding and care I don't know how I would have coped. Fred was hurting too. I could see it in his eyes. He loved those animals like me, and they had become a part of his life. Over the years, Fred has joked with me and said, ‘The only way you're going to get me off this farm is when you carry me out in my coffin.' Dear Fred, what a lovely man.

January came and went and so did the deaths. Oh, how I wished for those halcyon days when Mayfield Alpacas was in its infancy; it seemed all so easy back then.

Why was it all going wrong so quickly? I searched the internet and text books for any answers, any reasons. Surely I must have overlooked something fundamental.

I found nothing new and, more worryingly, even the vets were scratching their heads. In February the lab reported that two more alpacas had similar suspicious lesions. I was at the end of my tether. The doubts had already started to kick in. I started questioning my competence as an alpaca breeder; what in god's name was happening to my alpacas, my business, my self-esteem? Everything that I had worked so hard for over the past sixteen years seemed to be hanging in the balance. So many times I cried for my animals. It couldn't just end like this. This was not how it was meant to be. In sixteen months time I wanted to hand over to Andy to continue my dream. I wanted it so much, but I was so tired. Tired of fighting! How many more times would I have to fight for something in my life? The penny then dropped!!! If I wanted my dream to continue then I was going to have to fight again, I was going to have to fight again because, if I didn't, nobody else would. Yes, they had once saved my life and now I knew I had to save theirs.

Survival Of The fittest

It was now sixteen weeks since the death of my first alpaca, and the so-called experts were no nearer to coming up with any answers. My frustration was building, and I knew it would now be up to me to find a solution to this nightmare. I knew I couldn't do it on my own. I needed moral and technical support and there was nobody better to turn to than Nigel. Nigel approaches everything with an engineer's mind, and this problem was no exception. We knew the animals were losing weight, and we now knew that the worm burden was high on the majority of animals that had a post mortem exam. However, there is one defining factor that sets alpacas apart from most other animals when it comes to detecting worms and, as I will explain later, this proved to be crucial in our situation.

Meanwhile, we decided to look at this from a different angle. Nigel asked me to compile all the nutritional data sheets for the feed we were using. A friend of Nigel's, Steve Walker, who is a very successful dairy farmer, came to the farm one day, and it was whilst we were having coffee that I expressed my concerns to Steve. I knew Steve would be a good source of information. I respected him as a farmer, and in no way was I concerned that by involving Steve we might jeopardise our need for discretion with regard to suspected TB. Analysing the haylage that we had made the previous summer was another suggestion. Nigel assembled a large spreadsheet and, as we entered the data for the feed, together with the dietary information for alpacas, which we had researched from South American websites, a startling pattern started to appear. My animals, for the first time in sixteen years, had a protein and copper deficiency. Not only that, I had my suspicions that the alpacas may well have become resistant to the wormers I was administering. I was mortified. The quantity of feedstuffs we had been feeding was on a massive scale; how then could this have happened? When the analysis of the haylage came back, the pieces of the jigsaw puzzle started to slot in to place. I had also enlisted the help and advice of Claire Whitehead, who I first met when I was staying down in Oxfordshire at Joy's home. Claire is Joy's daughter, a veterinarian specialising in camelids, who worked at the Royal Veterinary College in London. Claire also took a camelid research fellowship under the world renowned camelid expert, Dr David Anderson, at the Ohio State University, treating an impressive fifteen hundred camelid patients per year. I had also researched in some depth the myriad of alternative wormers available; unfortunately there are no wormers that are currently licensed specifically for alpacas. However, as I mentioned earlier, there is one defining factor that sets alpacas apart from most other species when it comes to detecting worms. It is in the way in which a worm burden is diagnosed. It is absolutely imperative that the correct procedure is performed for identifying parasite eggs in camelids faeces. Generally, camelids may be clinically affected at lower levels of parasite infestation than many other farm animals. Claire recommends the optimal diagnostic method for identifying gastrointestinal parasite eggs and coccidia in Camelids - the Modified Stoll's test. The standard test - the McMaster's test, which is more commonly used, is inferior to the Modified Stoll's test in the sensitivity in which it detects the amount of eggs per gram. The Modified Stoll's test is sensitive down to five epg (eggs per gram), as opposed to the McMaster's test which is only able to pick up faecal egg counts down to one hundred epg, or fifty epg in some labs. Not only that: the Modified Stoll's test is better at picking up the larger eggs produced by some other parasites which produce a lower number of eggs than others. The main thing is that lower egg counts can be much more significant in alpacas, but may be missed by other diagnostic methods. The reason the Modified Stoll's test is better at detecting lower egg counts is because it incorporates double centrifugation and uses a concentrated sugar solution.

Now, armed with all the information and technical data, we formulated our plan, putting everything into practice that we had now learned. Nigel set about making a hanging animal crate, which enabled us to weigh every alpaca in the entire herd, along with a digital crane scale, which he had purchased from eBay. From here we were able to calculate the correct amount of wormer (by drench and injection) for each individual alpaca. Steve also suggested that we might consider incorporating a high protein feedstuff as part of our unique, but totally unorthodox, alpaca diet. Steve suggested calf weaner nuts, which contain 17% protein. I had never heard of anyone feeding these to alpacas, but we had nothing to lose and everything to gain so we went for it. Week by week we religiously performed the necessary treatments, along with the weekly weighing of the herd, which was recorded onto another of Nigel's excel spreadsheets. Three weeks in to the new feed regime and we were starting to see some incredible results. The alpacas had started gaining in weight, were obviously responding to the treatments, and generally looked in much better shape. I was overjoyed; we all were.

Nevertheless, we still had to wait for the final decision/results from DEFRA: would we have TB in the herd or not? Until then we couldn't rest on our laurels. It was an agonising wait, but the positive indication that I tried to focus on was that the alpacas were improving in every single circumstance. I hoped and prayed we would be in the clear. When the results finally came through we were nearing the end of June 2013. I recognised the voice on the phone immediately as the lady from DEFRA. On hearing the results I dropped to my knees and wept, ‘Thank you, God, thank you, God,' I repeated over and over again. As luck would have it Nigel was at the farm that particular afternoon. Sam, who was working in the coffee shop, panicked when she saw me on my knees and alerted Nigel. He lifted me up and wrapped his arms around me as he had done so many, many times before, and through the muffled sobs I spurted out, ‘Results are negative, they're negative.' All the anxiety, stress and worry of the past six months poured out like someone had opened a tap. Finally, finally it was all going to be okay. Nigel handed me his handkerchief as he wiped away my tears, and smiled.

For the first time in six months I truly believed that I would have a farm to handover, to handover to Andy and continue my dream!