Belen NM Rescue - Warning: graphic images

I got a call from a guy needing to surrender his 4 female llamas early April 2023. He had taken them in from someone who needed to get rid of them about 5 or 6 years ago. They had 10 acres to roam and he liked them but had to sell his place and could not take them along. Financial hardship is often the reason for surrendering llamas. It did not sound like an emergency so April 18th, Jodi Addis, an expert llama handler and rescue assistant, went to see how they looked and how we would load them up. She found they looked ok but one had an injury on her hip that was missing fiber with some cuts. They also had not much of anything to eat. They had been scrounging in neighbor’s’ yards for anything to eat and the owner was considering letting them go roam on 200 acres of a subdivision to be able to eat something. They had gotten out on the highway at least once as well.
Some good news is that they like grain and will come for it. ​

Four females surrendered from Belen at the pickup location.

Izzy, Groot (in back), Little Girl, and Duchess in Albuquerque at Llamas del Sol space

​April 19th Frank and Jodi picked up the llamas. The owner had them in a chute that was easy to back up to and they were very eager to get out of that space and jumped right into the trailer. A very easy load up this time.
The 4 girls were brought back to Albuquerque where they were penned adjacent to our other females. Little Girl with an injury, her mother was Izzy, Groot, and Duchess were the other two. Groot was the most nervous of the group. Izzy and Little Girl were very compliant.

Jodi working to clear the wound on Little Girl's left hip.

The exposed wound after Jodi managed to clear the fiber away. Hundreds of maggots in her fiber and wounds.

​I noticed a rotting smell when I went to see the new girls the next day. The small female had a serious wound. On April 21st, Jodi and I went to work cleaning her up and found hundreds of maggots buried in her wound. We were in over out head with this injury and decided that day to take her to the vet. We figured she would need some pain relief at least to dig out all the dead tissue and clear out all the maggots that were drilling into her. What was very encouraging was what a fantastic patient Little Girl was. She cried lightly as Jodi was trimming away the fiber to get at the wound (which was huge!) but once Jodi started irrigating the wound with a weak solution of betadine, she was quiet and still. We kept her mom, Izzy,  in the pen with her for comfort. There was also a llama adoption happening this day so when we got ahold of the vet, he said we could bring her tomorrow (Saturday).

Little Girl spent a week at the veterinarian hospital. They cleaned her and the wound showed a hole

Asking the vets assistant about the large masses on her hip. Response was, "its a bruise and will go away".

As instructed, we cleaned her wound every day and flushed it deeply. We used fly repellent as well to prevent maggots.

The vet kept her for over a week as the cleaning was a process and they wanted her to be healing. When we picked her up I was not allowed to talk to the vet directly and did not feel satisfied as to why she had large masses on her. The diagnoses was that she had an injury that got infested with maggots and that if we keep her clean she will heal. 
Jodi and I took turns cleaning her 2x a day and used a solution of weak betadine for flushing and silver antibiotic spray and finished with a gentle fly repellant. We did this for two months. 
One day I had a group of veterinary technician students over and their instructor who looked at Little Girl. I pointed out that there was some tissue that looked necrotic to me so I decided to cut some of it off. Little Girl did not even flinch but the snip that I took was like a 1 inch circle and it bled, to my horror. 

I cut off a black protrusion from her wound after we had been cleaning it for about 2 months. It bled slightly and we placed a bandage and pressure which stopped the bleed.

A week or so after cutting a tip of black tissue the picture shows weird growth.

From early on I kept asking my veterinarians if this was cancer. The wound was not healing but tissue was growing. Little Girl always had a good appetite, was very active, easy to treat and I was feeling more and more close to her as she tolerated so much treatment. Luckily she loved getting some grain and always came voluntarily into the catch pen. After trying one veterinarian and talking with a couple of others, we decided to take her to see another vet in Los Lunas. We brought her mom along with her (Izzy) to make the trip less stressful. 

picture of before vet #2 worked on Little Girls hip wound

Vet # 2 trying to reach the bottom of the open wound and declares he cannot feel the end of the cavity.

The vet examined the wound and tried to determine the size of the cavity in her hip and it was bigger than he could reach. Amazingly Little Girl only cushed and did not make any sounds. She seems not to have a lot of pain with all the probing. The vet said he could clean up the wound and see from there what should be done. There would be surgical removal of a lot of tissue and he would let me know how badly her hip and leg were damaged. I asked if this was cancer and he said very unlikely. I requested a biopsy anyway. The biopsy would be done from a tissue sample taken during the surgical cleaning. 

Little Girl came back from her surgery with a cover over her cleaned wound that was tied to her skin. We were instructed to remove the bandage each day to cleanse it and then replace it with the strings that were attached to her skin. Little Girl tolerated this very well. A week later the surgeon called to let us know that she has a very aggressive form of skin cancer and there was no treatment at this stage. We continued to clean and care for Little Girl and give her the happiest life we could. 
Little Girl passed away on July 20, 2023. She was active until the morning we found her. Mysteriously, Duchess went down only about a week later. We examined Duchess and discovered she was an intact male and renamed him Duke. Duke ate and drank but would not get up.  Duke died July 30, 2023 of unknown causes. Perhaps he was very upset at the loss of Little Girl. This was a very hard summer with these losses. Izzy and Groot were ultimately adopted later in the summer and have a lovely new space in the mountains near Santa Fe, NM.