FOCUS on Health - MOPACA Winter Seminar 2022

The MOPACA 2022 Winter Seminar is FOCUS on Health and will be held on January 29,  2022 from 9 am to 12:30 pm (Central Time) Registration closes January 26, 2022. 

Dr. Dennis French will kick off the morning with an overview of parasites that affect camelids. The focus will be on the effects of the various parasites, ranging from reduced growth and annoyance, to the more serious effects that include life-threatening anemia, depression, and death. The goal of this presentation will be to openly discuss best options for prevention of problems as opposed to reactive treatments. 

Next, Dr. Signe Balch will present an overview of normal reproductive behavior in alpacas, some of the breeding difficulties that may be encountered and how to potentially troubleshoot them, and then a brief overview of birthing.   

About the presenters:

Dr. Dennis French graduated from the University of Minnesota and began his professional career as an Instructor at Louisiana State University. After two years there he headed north to the Illinois Equine Field service practice in Naperville. He was then recruited back to LSU and spent that next thirty years there rising to the rank of tenured Professor. In 2009, Dr. French was recruited to the University of Illinois as a Full Professor and joined the Farm Animal Medicine and Surgery section. He currently is serving as the Head of the Veterinary Clinical Medicine Department with 94 faculty members. Dr. French has a long interest in the parasites of large animals and has published extensively about their impact on animal health and productivity. 

Dr. Signe Balch is a large animal veterinarian that has worked along the Front Range south of Denver as a mobile solo practitioner for the last eleven years.  She works primarily with small ruminants, particularly alpacas and llamas.  Dr. Balch has been interested in small ruminant medicine since growing up on a farm in Kansas that raised sheep for both meat and fiber.  She graduated with her degree in veterinary medicine from Kansas State University in 2001 after completing a doctorate in immunology at Oxford University.  She is a member of the American Association of Small Ruminant Practitioners and currently serves as a member of  the American Veterinary Medical Association Food Safety Advisory Committee.  When she is not on the road being a veterinarian she enjoys spending as much time as she can with her family, especially her two teenagers. In her elusive free time she also enjoys reading, knitting, baking and working with her own crew of animals that include alpacas, sheep and horses.