Читать книгу Medicine and Surgery of Camelids - Группа авторов - Страница 34

When you put something sharp into an animal, it is likely that it is going to move. With this assumption, most people restrain the animal before they inject. The fallacy with this approach is the restraint causes the animal to fight before the needle touches the skin.

Given a camelid's long neck, it is exceedingly difficult to eliminate bodily movement by tying the head, even when the animal is inside a chute. Complete and total restraint takes a lot of time and can be dangerous to do before an injection is given. Containing the animal instead of restraining it and learning to stand in a way that produces predictable movement eliminates the need for restraint (Box 2.2).

The easiest way to give injections is in a catch pen or in a trailer. If you are doing herd health, pack the pen as described earlier (the author prefers to do herd health work in groups of 8–10). Put as many animals as will comfortably fit inside the catch pen. The animals will appear crowded; leaving approximately 20% of empty space in the pen. Eight to ten alpacas or 5–6 llamas in a 9 × 9‐ft pen is ideal. For situations where there are not enough animals to fill the pen, the pen can be made smaller with bales of hay, or the panels adjusted to make a smaller area.