Question:
Our breeding male got into a pasture with our weanling females. The oldest female is 8 months old. Can they get bred at that age and if so what should we do? Should we try to abort them, and if so when and how?

Answer:
I have often been surprised how young some of our camelid females are receptive and fertile and how young some of the males have sperm.

The female, as an induced ovulator has a number of requirements to fulfill prior to being able to conceive. First the ovaries must be mature enough to be able to produce follicles. In many females this actually doesnít occur until well after a year of age. We have actually seen some that did not mature until they were 2 1/2 to 3 years of age. Then once the ovaries are mature they need to be producing follicles to be truly receptive and they need to have a follicle approximately 2 mm in size to ovulate and become pregnant.

Having 8 month old females that are mature enough to meet all of these physical attributes is possible but unusual.

Young males also need a level of maturity prior to being capable of breeding. Dr. Walter Bravo says that there is an apparent relationship between the penis separating from the sheath and young males having sperm. This normally occurs at 20 to 24 months of age. We have, however, had several young herd sires that settled their first females at 16 months of age and one incident where an 8 month old male impregnated three young females.

I might add that that experience has demonstrated that when males are used at a very young age (under 2 1/2 years old) the first crop of offspring are usually not as good as those produced when they are older.

About 10 years ago we always ran our young male and female weanlings together until they were a year of age. We had an incident where three of these young 7 to 9 month old females got pregnant and the oldest male weanling in the field was 8 months old. We confirmed the pregnancies and aborted the three young females. Lesson learned, we no longer run our weanling males and females together.

In response to your original questions, there are several steps I would recommend. If any of the young females did in fact get bred and conceive I would suggest aborting them. We have, over the years actually bred as young as 12 months. We find that this is much too young. The cria are small, the young dam usually does not have enough milk and it is very hard on the young female to have to put her efforts into developing a cria instead of normal growth and maturation. We currently do not breed any female until she is at least 16 months of age and weighs at least 200 pounds.

First, you will need to confirm that any of the females are in fact pregnant. This can be done with either an ultrasound or a progesterone test. In either case, I would wait 30 to 60 days after the exposure to do the testing. If any of them are pregnant they should then be aborted. According to Dr. David Anderson at Ohio State University, the drug of choice to abort them is Cloprostenaol. The commonly used brand name is Estrumate. A 250 micro gram dosage is recommended, which is 1cc administered twice 48 hours apart. It would then be prudent to again pregnancy test them to confirm that they did abort.