dry skin and hair loss

Hi everyone,

I've a 12yr male gelding who over the last week is showing white hairless patches under one eye and the base of one of his ears - though nowhere else on his body. The patches are dry with a small amount of fine white scales, they don't appear to be sore and he's not scratching at them. I'm trying to establish whether this is a mite/mange or dietry deficiency (such as zinc). My whole herd is vaccinated with Dectomax, though I don't know if this covers external parasites too.

Is anyone able to point me as to what this could be please and whether a spot-on treatment is suitable for llamas as this would definitely eliminate tick/mite problems at this time of year. None of the others in the herd are displaying any problem.

Thanks Loraine

Do you mean whether spot-on treatments are ok for llamas? My wormer (Dectomax) is a pour-on treatment for cattle and it works fine. I had the dung tested after treatment to make sure.

Several years ago, I had a very elderly lady llama with exactly the same problem. The problem seemed to develop in her later years and to begin with didn't seem to cause her any problems. She developed a habit of itching her side against a prickly hedge and at this point I took her to the Bristol Vet School where a specialist llama vet happened to be working at the time. They did all manner of tests on her and couldn't find the cause, although did say they'd seen it before in brown coloured animals?? I never did manage to cure it for her, it eventually got worse and spread to other areas - almost like a sort of llama eczema. I did find a homeopathic horse cream for mange stopped the itching and the scaling (sorry I cannot remember the name) but it was more a case of managing the symptoms than treating the cause. And don't forget sun block in the summer!!
Good luck,
Caroline