Question:  Abortion and Hormone Therapy

I'm hoping you can give me some advice.  I have a female alpaca that spontaneously aborted her first pregnancy at about the beginning of her third trimester.  She was rebred and successfully carried and delivered a healthy & beautiful cria with no problem.  She was rebred and spontaneously aborted again at about the same time as the first pregnancy.  We purchased her in the southwest US and she was being boarded there until we were ready to bring her to the northeast US where we reside.  The vet there suggested that it may be necessary to have her on hormones during her pregnancy to help her carry to term.  He did say that however she would need to be taken off them at a certain point toward the end.

I do have her here in the northeastern US now and my animals are being boarded at another farm until our place is completed.  We just rebred her at the beginning of January.  I want to do what's right and want to avoid losing another cria.  But I want to make sure that supplementing hormones is the right way to go especially since she was able to carry her second pregnancy to term.  Could this problem be the caused by something else such as a lack of selenium?

She is healthy in every other way & breeds easily.  She is a good mom and has a good genetic background.  We didn't think we'd have any more problems after she gave birth.  Even the vet in the southwest US seemed surprised at this.  The people we purchased our animals from have been in the industry for a long time and are very reputable breeders.

Have you seen this type of problem before & what would you suggest?  I'm very new at this and not sure what direction to go in.  Also can you recommend anywhere in Florida that I could find expert advice for these animals?

I would be very, very grateful for any advice.
 
Answer:
Thank you for writing ICI with your alpaca reproduction question.  I am going to forward it to a couple of our experts, in hopes of getting you some good advice.  Unfortunately, abortions can occur for many reasons, so I don't expect that any of them will be able to specifically diagnose your situation over e-mail.  But, they might be able to recommend a course of action to minimize your risks.  Please let me know if you haven't gotten any response in the next 7 days so I can follow-up.  As you know, the electronic age is great, but sometimes we have difficulty getting our messages through.

Have a good day!

Tracy J Miesner, DVM