I wasn't too sure where to post this but here felt right as animals are involved - apologies if its in the wrong place moderators and please feel free to move it
We have a friend who has a small holding with lots of lovely animals and birds. Last year was not an easy year for her and then last November, on doing her usual daily early morning rounds she found that one of her young alpaca's had died in the night. To cut a long story short, the cause of death after tests was confirmed as TB. Our friend has had to wait for 2 months to find out just how many of her alpaca herd may be infected with TB and within the next few days she will find this information out for certain at long last. Some one is going to X-ray 10 of her herd tomorrow (Sunday) to see if there are any signs of the disease in their lungs and then on Monday the DEFRA vets will be testing all of her herd returning on Thursday to check for positive and negative results. All the alpacas that return a positve test result will be killed without further ado and all the alpacas with negative test results then have to be blood tested to rule out false negatives. As I am sure you will appreciate, our friend is beside herself with worry, she has built her herd of alpacas up over several years. They all have names and some she has had to hand rear - they are all great characters. The other very sad thing is that all the females are currently carrying this years babies. We are all hoping that things will not be as bad as feared but if you do have any healing/postive energy to spare please do think of Senara and her alpaca's during the days ahead and possibly her 2 wallabies who I gather can also catch TB. Fortunately all her other animals - shire horses, sheep, etc. should be OK.
We sincerely hope that most, if not all, of the herd will return negative test results come Thursday and that we will be able to breathe a sigh of relief rather than us having to Bless those that have to depart to the Summerlands and trying to support our friend as best we can at this time.
Blessings,
CD
PS Please don't be offended by this comment but at this time, I don't really want a debate started on the pro's and con's of TB which can be a very emotive topic.





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