Dear Dr. Anderson,

I wanted to ask what your experience has been with alpacas that are low milk producers.  Do you find that with each cria born they produce more milk naturally?  Do you suggest using a lactation supplement?  If so, do you believe that they have helped the situation?  Any other comments or suggestions you may have would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you for your assistance.

Answer:

The challenge is to differentiate "poor milkers" from "supressed milkers". Supressed milkers have some issue: parasites, malnutrition, disease/illness, stress, etc. Poor milkers, or females with low "milkability" are genetically predisposed to that and will never really do much and are actually poor breeding stock. Animal with legitimate problems do often respond to treatment. We routinely use Dr. Pollards herbs here (relatively inexpensive and harmless). Our second choice is Domperidone as suggested by Dr. Evans - more expensive. We get about 60% response to each of those products. We also try to increase structural carbohydrates by adding beet pulp to diet. You can get a commercial product for this purpose from Useful Llama Items called "Booster Care". All re-cooperating animals in our hospital are fed that. Obviously treat whatever the underlying problem is if it can be found.

David E Anderson, DVM , MS , DACVS