As a Camelid vet I like challenges, not problems. Challenges are when someone else's animal has a medical or behavior problem. I can chat on the phone for awhile, maybe look up some reference data, ask my wife, Suzi, for her viewpoint and usually help the owner or a vet solve the problem. If I don't know something to try. I can call a network of experienced Camelid vets around the country to find an answer. Ten to twenty minutes on the phone 3 or 4 times a week is OK and I've met a lot of people from all over the U.S. Most of the time I can help but in some cases there are not enough facts or it can't be treated over the phone without a local vet to help.

Now, a problem is different. that's when one of our own llamas has a "challenge". It's one thing to chat on the phone but it's a lot different if we are going out to the barn 3 to 4 times a day to tube feed supplement milk to a cria day after day for weeks or longer.

At our ranch tube feeding a cria is a three handed job. One to hold the cria, one to hold the tube and the third to push milk into the tube. I know of a few two handed tubing's at other ranches where the tube went south so that stomach surgery was needed to retrieve it or milk was flushed into the lungs (fatal).

In November of 1998, one of our young but proven females had a full term cria that was a little light at 20 1/2 lbs. The cria passed his RID test with a reading of 1400 the next day and was a good nurser. While I'm not surprised if a cria doesn't gain weight in the first 24 hours, but after a few days of no gain we started supplementing with 8oz goat's milk twice a day. We already started mom on our regular milk stimulation program of extra selenium injection (5mg once), beer malt (1 tbs twice daily), extra TDN (total digestible nutrients) in the form of COB (corn, oats, barley). Still no weight gain after a week, so we went to 8 oz four times a day. This resulted in about 1 lb. gain every 3 to 4 days which is well below our average. The cria checked out with no problems and we could find nothing wrong with the mother except for not providing enough milk to produce at least 1/2 lb. daily weight gain by herself. We even added a couple of ounces of yogurt to each 8 oz. milk tubing because each ounce has 78% more calories than milk. A week or two is fine but after three weeks, I wanted mom to provide more so we could either stop tube feedings or at least get down to one or two a day.

In June 1998, Suzi and I spent sometime traveling with Tina Hodge going to the AOBA Conference where she was speaking on Herbal Medicine for alpacas. You can guess how much herbal medicine was taught at U.C. Davis in the late sixties,- zero. The same amount of information has been in the 5 or 6 most popular vet med monthly journals that are supposed to help keep vets aware of new developments in the ever changing art of Veterinary Medicine. Tina's knowledge of herbs helping Camelid problems made me pick up a few books on herbs for humans.

Now we are in the middle of December and every time we tried cutting back on the goat milk/yogurt, the cria lost weight. This made me get out one of three books. "The Green Pharmacy" by James A. Duke. Under breast feeding for women, it said if there was not enough milk, the mother should take Fenugreek. A local health food store sold us a pound of Fenugreek seeds but the book didn't suggest the amount be used by nursing humans so it was even harder to guess the dose for our 300 lb. llama mom. Using my amazing understanding of Mother Nature we started with one ounce of seeds twice daily on top of a few ounces of COB.

The next day after two doses, the cria gained a pound so we cut back to tubing twice daily. Another day, another pound so by the third day, we stopped milk supplementation. Three pounds of gain was more than he had gained in the previous 12 days. The next day his weight was down more that 2 pounds and I was real disappointed until I saw his dirty diapers. With too much milk from mom, now he had diarrhea so we started a homeopathy treatment for him and reduced mom's Fenugreek to 1 oz a day.

Needing more Fenugreek, I ordered 10 lbs. from an herb distributor here in California and at the same time ordered a few more books. "The Herb Book" by John Lust listed 513 medical herbs and their use. In the front, listed under the glossary of medical effects is the group of herbs that are galactogogue (milk producing). The next day I ordered four more herbs; Anise, Caraway, Dill, and Fennel (all seeds).

Our herbal milk producer now had equal parts of five herbal seeds and we were putting one 5 oz Dixie cup of the blend (wt. 2 oz) on mom's COB twice daily. Now that the cria was over the diarrhea he was gaining 3/4 lb. per day with no goat milk.

By now I had made up several batches of the 5-way blend and was sharing it with llama friends that had moms that needed to produce more milk. They all reported that it worked but some mothers got tired of it after a few weeks and wouldn't eat it. Now I had a challenge so it was back to "The Herb Book" where there were eleven herbs listed to stimulate milk production. A few are pricey but two of them were herb leaves that might be more palatable besides stimulating milk at a reasonable cost. A quick 800 number phone call had Basil and Red Raspberry leaves delivered the next day.

We are now using the six-way blend at the rate of 1 "Dixie" cup full once daily starting at 11 months after last breeding which we hope is two weeks before delivery. When the mom delivers we increase her herbs to a "Dixie" cup twice daily for the first 3-4 days until the cria has a good weight gain. Suzi stores the opened bag in a Tupperware bowl or several zip-lock bags to keep it fresh.

About 90 bags have been used around the U.S. so far. The heat and drought on the East Coast and Ohio area really effected milk production this year. The variation in amounts needed depend on results observed. Some llamas and alpacas do well on 1 dose per day while others need 2 doses twice daily.