Viejo came to us from the Alamosa rescue in December of 2022. He struggled to move then as we gently herded the 25 llamas towards our huge corral. He would lay down to rest every 25 feet or so and stop at the snow piles to hydrate since they had no water. Animal control called us after knowing of this dire situation after 4 years. Carcasses lay everywhere of the casualties of this rough life with no food or water for years. Who knows how big this herd once was on 160 acres of rabbit or sage brush. But Viejo, walking with a limp favoring his left hind hip, carrying a matted fiber blanket that nearly reached the ground like a train on a wedding gown, was a survivor. He has a fine featured face with gentle eyes and not very tall - maybe 5'4" including his ears when standing erect. 

The video here first shows Viejo eating snow and moving to the next snow pile as I approach. The others in the herd are doing the same. They have never been handled and are not that afraid of humans but they are also weak and potentially malnourished. After several days of working with them, we managed to get them all loaded and taken to our sanctuaries. This is to provide some context as to where Viejo came from and his challenges in his life. Forward to almost two years later. 

When it happened, Viejo was in the large 5 acre field we now lease. Before the  leg break he was in a one acre field since the rescue that was right outside my door with 6 other males. Viejo is intact as is Wookie, a yearling from the same rescue who has medical issues and does not digest properly. They look alike and Wookie is in love with Viejo - sticks with him and eats with him. Viejo is a good grandpa, I think.  I got to know Viejo well and enrich his diet with alfafa. He still wont take any grain. All the Alamosa llamas had not ever had grain or supplements and they are all suspicious of it. A few, I have convinced after a year or more. But Viejo is old - so I think - because his front incisors are worn down almost to the pallet and his very long matted fiber looks like 20 years worth. He must have been starving a lot in his life to wear them down his teeth on sand or hard materials. 

The move from the field was challenging as I had to yet train Viejo and Uno, another adult gelding who was part of Viejo's family, to walk about 4 "blocks" to a new field. Uno had practice within the acre. Viejo, with his limp and his age, I left alone except for administering some medications occasionally. I gave him a quick course in leading with the halter and he was fabulous. I put him behind Uno, Wookie, and a couple other trained geldings for company; and he managed the walk along the ditch with culverts appearing now and then. With patience, not pulling, and allowing him to think about the situation, he came along a little wobbly, limping slightly and was joined with his pals at the new 5 acre space. A month goes by and all is well there. 

There are 4 more yearlings we have been raising that I have been holding in a 1.5 acre space that I wanted to combine with the adult males. Then I could give the females more space. The yearlings are becoming sexually mature and have weaned. They have to be separated from the females and have been since they were about 11 months old. It was suggested by one of my mentors why not put them all together? Sounded good to me. That should also help the youngsters adjust well being managed somewhat by adult males and learn llama manners. 

I don't know what went wrong - I didn't see it happen. I had noticed that Viejo was keeping the yearlings in check and even chasing them a little to keep them from being annoying. I was surprised and impressed at his activity level. It did not occur to me that he could be harmed. The yearlings all ran away from him whenever I saw them interact. The field is a 10 minute walk from my house though so I don't get to observe as often as I want. It's a sad situation that we lost the near field. 

November 15, I am at the newly leased 5 acre field to feed and check on the llamas with my friend, mentor, and volunteer Jodi Addis. We amble up the field as I explain Viejo often stays separated up filed a ways so I can bring him alfalfa and the others are too far away to notice so they don't interfere. Jodi sees something weird with his foot. Oh God! It's definitely broken. I'm crying as I look at how he is holding it and not walking. He is standing on three legs. Jodi makes me answer her question - "What are you going to do with him?"
"I'm going to move him away from the others."
"Then what?", she wants to know.
"I don't know - stabilize his leg, I hope." 
Will we have to put him down? Is this fixable? What are the options? I'm crying and trying to think straight. I get a halter and Jodi assists with herding/walking him to the corrals. He can do it - hobbling on three legs. He is amazing - strong, not crying, not giving up, not fussing. I am just getting more scared at losing this amazingly resilient elder llama. Seeing him move three legged around, I decide we have to stabilized his leg. Jodi says she can help splint it. I love Jodi - she is always up for a tough medical situation and does not shy away from trying to help from the grossest wounds to broken legs, she is always there <3 !

With his leg stabilized using an ankle/shin split I saved, Viejo is able to touch his toe to the ground a bit. He is feeling more confident as am I that we can transport him if we find a veterinarian willing to but a cast on him. Villiage Veterinary Hospital in Los Lunas calls me back fairly promptly. Dr. Jablinski is glad to hear it is his cannon bone - that could be cast. I am relieved she says to bring him in. I have a trailer with a ramp and since he did learn a little about leading recently, I think I can get him in the trailer. Going through this trauma with llamas always brings out the best in the llama, I feel. They seem to know they are being helped and they are usually very good patients if they know me. I don't mind spending the money on their treatment since they will become very loyal and trusting llamas after the trauma is over, if they make it. I am full of admiration for Viejo as he loads in the trailer. Getting the xrays was a piece of cake with him. He hung his leg off the edge of the trailer floor giving the best vantage for the mobile xray machine as if he know what we wanted him to do. 

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. ​

​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.

​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).

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. 

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. 

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.