Facial Eczema in Alpacas

Alpacas are one of the most sensitive animal species to Facial Eczema, more sensitive than cattle, sheep, deer or goats. Throughout New Zealand, we need to be vigilant and aware of what is happening at the base level of our pasture during the facial eczema season, which can run from January through until May each year, depending on the weather conditions at the time.

The fungus Pithomyces Chartarum, that produces the spores which contain a chemical called Sporadesmin (the cause of facial eczema), requires a number of environmental conditions to occur, in order for it to survive and replicate. The fungus requires a base grass temperature of over 10 deg Celsius, for a period of 2 - 6 days, and moisture the equivalent of 5mm of rain.  Heavy dews and high relative humidity can produce the same effect.  The fungus grows on dead leaf litter at the base of the pasture.

Dead leaf litter

There are several different approaches to facial eczema control, but as yet I do not know of any failsafe method.

The Scientific Method 

The standard prevention method for facial eczema in alpacas is to spray the pasture with a fungicide every month to six weeks, and to feed alpaca zinc nuts at a rate of 200 grams per animal per day, during the facial eczema season.

Care needs to be taken when spraying the pasture with fungicide, to ensure the area one metre through the fence, (the area an alpaca can reach), is sprayed as well. Fungicide spray has a 60 -70% success rate.

It is a good idea to have alpacas in smaller groups at this time of year, so they can be supervised, to ensure every alpaca has the required amount of zinc nuts each day.

The Organic Method

The general rule for organics is to create a healthy soil, then you get healthy pasture and healthy animals.

To improve the soil biology, liquid lime is applied to activate the organisms already present, and to release the nutrients locked up in the soil.  Calcium also helps photosynthesis in the plants. To the lime, a small quantity of Nitrosol Oceanic is added and 2 mls per hectare of vitamin B12 to help the lime be absorbed and utilised quickly.  Then soil microbes are added to jump start the humus. Soil microbes include friendly fungi and baceria. Zinc sulphate may also be added to the mix.

In general circumstances, the earthworm population can double in six weeks. These extra earthworms are invaluable because they recycle dead matter faster and the soil microbes we applied do the same job. Together, the earthworms and microbes crowd out the harmful fungi, such as pithomyces chartarum (FE spores) and replace them with beneficial fungi. This is the ideal situation we are looking for, because we are providing a habitat inhospitable for facial excema spores.

Pasture with a clean base

 Homeopathic Support

FE Nosode is a homeopathic support treatment. The liquid may be added to water troughs or drenched orally. For more infomation visit: www.farmsupport.co.nz

We live on the coast in Northern Taranaki, an area with very high spore counts dring the facial eczema season.  To mitigate our levels of exposure, we have a regime in place which begins by spraying our pasture progressively from 15 December each year, to ensure all paddocks have been sprayed by 1 January and then we spray monthly from 1 January to the end of April, - this covers May as well, because the spray lasts a month to six weeks. Many people have the misconception that if they spray for facial eczema, it will kill all the spores.  It will not kill the spores that have developed. This is why we start spraying early,- mid December, before the spore counts start to rise, ie we have them at a nil count level and try and hold them at that level all facial eczema season.  We have our own spore testing kit, and regularly test our pasture.

Spore Testing Kit

We have found there is a large variation of spore count numbers in different paddocks. Therefore, we would suggest the use of local spore count numbers in your area be used as a guide only. A general spore count for your area may be 2000 spores, when in fact the paddock your alpacas are grazing on has a spore count of 40,000.  Spore testing kits are available through your veterinary clinic and are inexpensive.

From 15 December we start to introduce alpaca nuts which have zinc added to them.  We begin with a teaspoon of zinc nuts mixed with their ordinary nuts and increase the amount of zinc nuts until we have our alpacas fully fed on zinc nuts from 1st January each year.  All facial eczema treatment needs to be in the animals' system two weeks before the facial eczema season strikes.  Therein lies the problem.  We simply do not know when conditions will be favourable for the FE spores to flourish.  Will it be wet? Will there be heavy dews in two weeks time?

Another concern is that in alpacas the continued use of zinc over 90 days, can inhibit the uptake of copper.  We put some copper pipe in each water trough, and the copper leaches out into the water.  Copper levels may be checked by a blood test to see if they need topping up after the FE season.

To minimise the amount of dead leaf litter in our paddocks, we top our paddocks with a commercial ride on mower which has a catcher, so all mown grass is collected and taken away for compost, all year round.  We use an organic method of farming, thus there is very little leaf litter around for the fungus to grow on.  We dose our troughs weekly with FE nosode, and add seaweed meal to their nuts.

Plants to grow which have good levels of zinc include chickory, two poplar tree varieties, Populus Yunnanensis and Populus Androscoggin, and of course if we provide a tasty variety of plants alpacas love, - willow, coprosma, tree lucerne, and barberry, all of which keep the alpacas grazing up off the danger zone, this helps as well.

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