Digestion and Diarrhea
A word of warning - you may not want to be eating snacks while you are reading this. Especially chocolate snacks.
Alpacas are very much a nearly trouble free animal to care for. Enough food, clean water and reasonable shelter is just about it. Occasionally, things go wrong with their digestion and keeping an outlook for these things can head off costly corrections later on. If the animal is well fed and the G.I. tract is working well, then as a rule, your animal is going to be healthy. If you find a plop in the potty pile that looks runny - you've got a problem that needs quick attention.
Caring for Ruminants
...it is possible to mess up the bacteria in the alpaca's gut and rumen and they will starve to death with a full stomach.A ruminant has multiple specialized "stomachs" which allow the animal to digest fibrous materials. The one of special interest is the rumen which is quite large and is where bacterial digestion occurs to break down material that would otherwise be undigestable. So you need to think of ruminant digestion as a bacterial digestion factory instead of like us humans (digest chemically, with only a little help from beneficial bacteria). What this means is, it is possible to mess up the bacteria in the alpaca's gut and rumen and they will starve to death with a full stomach. How would this occur? You could over-administer antibiotics. Your vet will tell you how to administer antibiotics. If you think a little more might be better, you might wipe out the gut bacteria along with the bad ones that you wanted to kill. There are other ways, but normally, you will never encounter this problem. The rumen is designed to house and take care of its bacteria population.
Changing pastures
With many ruminants, moving onto fresh pasture is the beginning of runny stools. The bacteria get a sudden slug of different feed with a different moisture content, and they can't digest it very well. Typically, after a few days, a slightly different population of bacteria that is better suited for the food coming in will develop and the diarrhea will go away. Alpacas are not nearly as sensitive to this as are sheep and cattle. This is a good thing.
...it is a good practice not to shock their system with changes in feed.Avoid sudden changes
Though alpacas are not as sensitive to feed changes as other ruminants, it is a good practice not to shock their system with changes in feed. When moving from dry lot to fresh pasture, make sure they have a ready source of the hay they are used to. They will naturally eat some hay as well as the fresh pasture and give their rumen and bacteria time to adjust.
Analyzing digestion problems
The most important steps you can take to make sure everything is going well are the ones made in your pastures. Check the poop piles. Yes, your neighbors and friends will think you're crazy. Do it anyway.
WISE - The Watkins Index of Stool Efficiency
Yes, I manipulated the title to make a cute acronym. What I'm doing is assigning a number to each stool type to make it less difficult to describe. We're going to go from a 10 (which is individual beans) to a 1 (which is as fluid as milk). Also, by way of comparison, I'm going to use food to describe each one. You may find this disturbing, but when you've lowered yourself to talking about poop, you gotta accept a little humor.
Jelly beans (licorice) or malted milk balls- These are the piles I like to see. All is well with the digestion process.
Blackberries- Sometimes referred to as pine cones, but that's not a food. Basically, these are jellybeans stuck together. These are also OK in the potty pile.
Fig or Plum pudding- These are squishy, poorly defined pellets that are squeezed together. You can still see good definition in the wad. This is about what you'd expect moving onto fresh pasture to create. Should get back to a 9 in two days.
Cheap plum pudding- Plum pudding with cheap plums and not many of 'em. You see little definition in the wad.
Stiff mashed potatoes- Exactly as described. Color them dark brown and that's what they look like. When you see these, start to be concerned, and try to identify who the owner is.
Chocolate pudding- I told you not to snack. Exactly as described.
Creamed mashed potatoes- Granny mixes milk with the mashed potatoes until they're nice and smooth, like warm icing for your cinnamon rolls. Identify owner quickly. They will need medication to avoid health/weight decline and fiber breaks.
Ranch salad dressing
Heavy cream- Beyond this point, intervention and medication is urgent. Dehydration will occur quickly. Electrolytes will need to be added to their water.
Milk
