Carrie Baby

Finally one of our overdue girls has given up her baby.  I checked Chance and Larra over first thing this morning and thought this was going to be another day with nothing happening on the birthing front.  After I had fed all the animals and topped up their water containers I decided to come back indoors to do some chores here.  As soon as I had started on the kitchen Chance must have decided that it would be a good time to drop her cria with no interference from me.  I looked out of the window and there on the ground was a small wet cria so I ran to the barn to grab a clean towel and teramycin.  Ollie came over to help and did the drying while I tried to keep the flies away.  He sprayed her navel and Chance was quite happy to stand by watching so I took the opportunity to spray her with Naff Off but decided against spraying the cria in case Chance then rejected her.  Chance dropped the placenta almost straight away and I checked it over then picked it up in a carrier bag to go into the incinerator.  It was only when we decided to leave mother and baby alone to bond that we realised that we hadn't even checked what sex it was.  It was another girl.  Chance has already given us 2 females and I love her as she comes over to give me kisses.  I had already said to Si that we should really keep her for life if she produces another girl and he just laughed at the time.  Today when he telephoned from the office he said 'So we're keeping her then'.  I just thought I'd put that in writing in case he ever thinks about selling her.

She looked absolutely nothing when she was still wet but once she had dried out she seemed to double in size.  Her fleece is so dense, she also a lovely cream colour at the moment but I am sure that will soon change over the next few days once she starts to play in the dust/mud baths with the other babies.  Her sire is Lionheart who resides at Wellground Alpaca Stud and I have spent the evening on the internet trying to find a suitable name for her but it appears that Richard the Lionheart had no legitimate children so that idea went out of the window.  The last gig we went to was Jimmy Carr so we have carried on the gig theme and called her Carrie, it is also the name of a song so the music theme continues.

Temple, the darkest one above, was Chance's cria from last year and as soon as she saw the new cria feeding seemed to get a memory jolt and rushed over to join in so we had to put her into another paddock for the afternoon.

Larra went over to have a good look at the new cria and immediately started to hum.  I think she was trying to tell us that she'd have that one rather than go through the birthing process herself but we're hoping that jealousy will prompt her to finally drop her cria tomorrow.  This is another one we're excited about as the sire is Wellground Close Encounter and I will be just as pleased if this is a boy.  We would love a future sire with his bloodline.