The Ninth Year...: Camelid Course at Oregon State

Oregon State is a really cool school, if for no other reason than that they offer a two week rotation that revolves ENTIRELY around camelids. What are camelids, you might be asking? Scroll down this page, and you'll very quickly realize that camelids include New World camelids like alpacas and llamas (as well as their less well known cousins vicuna and guanaco) as well as our Old World camelid friend, the camel. As a quick side note, llamas are bigger than alpacas and have banana ears. Now you will always be able to tell them apart! For two weeks, we ate, slept, and breathed alpaca and llama, and it was amazing!

This rotation, unlike most of the ones that I've been on, had a pretty even mix of both lectures and labs. And considering that at Penn we mentioned camelids approximately 5 times during all of veterinary school, there was a lot to learn! Although the lectures were pretty amazing too, they weren't quite as photo-inspiring as our laboratory sessions, where we basically wrestled alpacas and llamas for a few hours, dodging spit and kicks as we went along.

Our subjects for many of these labs were the very forgiving (well, most of them, a certain alpaca that will remain nameless is still holding a grudge from last year's course, and the year before that, as she started kicking, spitting, and even peeing on anyone who got near her) llama and alpaca herd at Oregon State. These critters have been donated to the school and spend most of their lives just hanging out and grazing... that is, until the September Camelid course comes along! For two weeks, they get lots of love, whether they want it or not!

Some of our willing (and not so willing) volunteers!

For our first lab with the teaching herd, we focused on regular physical exam skills as well as catching, restraining, loving our camelid patients. Camelids have a few good ways of avoiding things they don't want to do, most of which we learned about that first day. It's pretty well known that they spit, but this can usually be avoided by staying away from the front of their face. See, what most people don't realize is that usually, when they are annoyed, they spit straight ahead without taking aim. So stand a little off to the side, and you should be safe. That is, unless someone else alpaca is aimed right at you! Alpacas and llamas also kick when they get annoyed, and usually they kick straight back, although some of them have perfected the roundabout kick, which can catch you off guard. Other camelids will simply refuse to move forward, no matter how you tug and pull on their halter. If you really need them to move, a wheelbarrow maneuver is indicated. And finally, sometimes, they just lay down. Yup, I'm not kidding. They lay down so much it even has it's own name- c(k)ushing.

Little alpaca physical exam

Getting a heart rate on an alpaca that decided to cush

Examining ears; note that no one (other than me) is standing directly in front of the alpaca

One of our other labs was a reproduction lab. We did full reproductive exams on some of the ladies, including a vaginal speculum exam and a rectal ultrasound,then followed it up with a demonstration of actual llama reproduction. Highlight of this lab was working with the llama with the best name ever; Kitty Whiskers.

Rectal ultrasound! Checking out her uterus and ovaries!

Vaginal speculum exam... Whitney is looking very intently into the vagina; to be fair, llamas have really cool cervixes!

And the main event, llama sex! This guy checked out all the ladies in the lab, but kept coming back to this pretty little white one.

Camelid ladies don't mess around. They know he's going to take a while (camelid sex can last up to an hour), so they just lay down.

On our first day, we did necropsies of three dead camelids. Necropsies are always great learning experiences, even if they are a little gory, and we ended up finding some really interesting abnormalities, including lymphoma in one animal and a fused kidney in another. While we were doing the necropsies, we were asked to remove the legs and save them. We weren't sure why until later that week when we had an orthopedics lab; somehow, 12 broken camelid legs appeared and needed "fixing". Although it may seem a little gruesome, it's so much more realistic to work on actual legs than on any sort of model, and this lab gave us the chance to actually pin and cast a broken bone. Even better, after they were fixed, x-rays were taken so we could see just how well we had done aligning the bones. Whitney, Ashley and I had a little butterfly fragment that kept threatening to displace itself, but to our surprise we managed to keep it in place with our fixation!


Whitney and Ashley placing one of the pins. And yup, it's a drill. Orthopedic surgery is not unlike construction!

Whitney and I with our finished, casted leg, just before it got sent out for radigraphs.

We had two more trips out to our friendly camelid herd, each time trying out some new procedures. This included some dentistry, placing stomach tubes, abdominocentesis (getting fluid from the abdomen while avoiding puncturing any important organs), drawing blood, placing catheters, etc.

Alpaca dentistry- you either saw across a tooth or slice it off with fetotomy wire. It's a very indelicate science that somehow manages to end up ok in the end.

Need blood from an alpaca and don't have anyone to restrain? Practice the Buckeye Bleed! You'll look ridiculous and the alpaca might take you for a ride, but it works!

Camelid abdominocentesis; Despite their thick skin, it's a lot nicer than in horses, since you go from the side!

Placing stomach tubes... This happens a lot less often than it does in cows. Why? Because if they are sick enough to need it, they'll probably die when you start trying to place a tube. Stress and sick alpacas just don't get along.

Finally, our trip culminated a castration lab (we each got to remove two testicles from real, live camelids) and a trip to a somewhat local alpaca/llama farm; unfortunately, I have no pictures of our surgical experience, but I have enough from our field trip to more than make up for it! Our primary goal on our field trip was to get some experience doing transabdominal ultrasound pregnancy detection. But while we were there, we also ultrasounded some mini donkeys for pregnancy as well as fed some camels some apples and toured all the other random animals present on the farm. Oh, and the highlight? Alpaca and llama meat for lunch! Sloppy Joses and sausages plus some camelid jerky, all of which was pretty amazing!

Not a happy llama. But then, they rarely are.

Checking this llama for a little one...

Sloppy Jose!

Llama/alpaca sausage. Just looking at it makes me hungry all over again.

On the farm they had this little orphan yak. It's mom had died shortly after birth, so they were bottle feeding it.

Baby yak checking out the vet students.

The two hump camel. She was amazing and huge, although you can't tell quite how big she is here... Her mouth is also full of apples. She ate at least 20 apples while we were there.

One hump camel eating apples.

Me with camel one hump. Her head is huge, but she was WAY smaller than camel two hump. And they had names, one of them was Daisy Mae, but I forget the other and which one was which.