s e v e n i s a j o u r n e y

This weekend I flew up to Whangerei, up in the far north. Why? To play with poop! I learned that a small whisk, coupled to a power drill, is a great tool for homogenizing those hard-to-get-at lumps that infest some poos! Fascinating! What could be more fun!

Well, actually, it was a fun weekend. Tiring, what with the 5 AM wake-up Saturday to make my 7 AM flight, but I got to meet some nice people, and learned a great deal. The purpose was to get a bunch of us trained in Fecal Egg Counting. This is the joy of processing fresh animal poo and looking for the various worm eggs within using a microscope.

Why, you ask? Well, all sorts of parasite nasties live out in the grass. Some of them get into stock (like alpacs) and can cause sickness or even death. To treat these worms for the last 50 years people have been regularly administering a chemical “drench” that kills most or all of those worms. Problem is, the worms are gaining resistance ot the drench. By counting the eggs in the poo you can determine when you need to drench, and by counting the eggs afterwards you can determine if the drench actually worked (a >95% drop in the total number of eggs).

My job will be to write a document for the general membership that will teach them how to do the counting themselves. Everything from what type of microscope to buy up tyhrough the identification of different egg types. Should be an “interesting challenge.”

Saturday evening I staying with Kathy and Dan at Rocky Bay alpacas, a beautiful farm and B&B north of Whangerei. Stunning view out over the Pacific, looking over a scenic rock-flled bay. Thate evening was filled with fun and informative discussions about alpaca. Kathy has had ‘paca for a decade now, and is one of the “old hands” in the NZ industry. I learned a great deal, both about her own medical experiences with the animals, and some of teh tortuous history of the association.

I also got to meet Julie, preseident of the NZ Llama association, face-to-face for the first time. I had to laugh at her comment “you sound older on the phone… um, wait, umm… I mean more experienced? educated? something?” The laughter brought a blessed end to that line of conversation.