Alpacas, injuries, and ACC

• By Natalie Pitfield

I’ve previously mentioned Amado, our alpaca who’d had a burst abscess on his leg.

It was a serious wound, and we’d been having the vet out twice a week to see if we could heal it. We thought we were winning the fight.

On the Monday the vet came out, and it looked a little bit better. I made the mistake of clipping the gate to the wrong wire when corralling Osito, Amado’s brother. He got loose and tried to protect Amado from the vet by lunging at her.

Alpacas are generally extremely docile but will protect their own. I held Osito off with my left arm while trying to protect the vet and Amado. We ended up getting both back in place.

On the Thursday, the vet came out again, and we realised the wound had turned nasty. We had to put Amado down and were devastated. So much effort was made to save him, but sometimes an injury is just too severe.

A few days later, my left shoulder was very sore. Then it became excruciating. I couldn’t figure out what was wrong, and no amount of painkillers was helping, so I went to the physio.

He knew straight away what was going on. I’d put my first rib out of place.

It was a learning curve for me as I didn’t even know I had a rib that ran over my shoulder. It certainly explained the odd swelling at the base of my neck and the extreme amount of pain I was in. I’m generally really good with pain being a long-term arthritis sufferer, but this was truly next-level.

The rib was gently guided back into place, and I was so much better in no time. Miraculous.
But the funny part was filling in my ACC form.

“How did you sustain the injury?”

Fending off an angry alpaca and then dragging his brother up the hill when he’d had enough of vets and their treatments.

I pictured the face of the person reading this and knew they’d definitely have a chuckle. Who could blame them? Farm injuries are the weirdest.

RECIPE: Cookies and cream cheesecake

Ingredients

250g packet plain biscuits (or Oreos are a great option)
150g butter (melted)
2 teaspoons gelatine
2 tablespoons boiling water
250g packet cream cheese (chopped)
1/2 cup caster sugar
300ml thickened cream
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
standard packet Oreo biscuits (broken)

Method

1. Line a pan with baking paper.
2. Break plain biscuits and place them in a food processor. Process until crushed. Add butter until combined.
3. Press the biscuit mixture firmly into the base of the pan. Chill for 20 minutes.
4. Whisk gelatine with a fork into hot water until it dissolves. Allow to cool slightly.
5. In a bowl, beat cream cheese and sugar until smooth. Beat in cream, vanilla and gelatine mixture.
6. Fold through the Oreo biscuits.
7. Pour mixture over the biscuit base and chill for 3 hours (until firm).

This recipe is from the editor’s kitchen