June 23, 2011

Dovis giving birth to our 2 newesr crias! Part 1

Dovis Part 2

The day began pretty much like every day...nothing too unusual although I did notice that Ishtar had been kind of agitated for the past several days....very noisy...unlike herself.

 

I had finally convinced Jay to help me move my compost pile and so he got his tractor and was scooping it up and turning it.  How exciting!  I'm composting my alpaca manure with worms and was very pleased with the results.  My worms were multiplying like crazy and turning leaves and alpaca pellets into lovely rich humus! 

He was going forward and back, scooping and dumping when all of a sudden he was looking back over his shoulder to see where he was going when I heard him yell "Julie!  There's a head coming out of somebody!"  (he still can't tel the animals apart!).  Low and behold there was!  It wasn't Ishtar though, it was Dovis, who we weren't expecting to give birth for a few more weeks!   I ran in and grabbed my camera and the phone just in case we needed to call the vet, and sat back and watched the miracle! 

Things went very smoothly and in about a half an hour, we had a beautiful white female cria on the ground.  We were never lucky enough to be present for the whole birth because up until now I had found that the more I waited and watched, the more likely they were to be born as soon as I had to leave to do an errand or attend to something else!  So it was truly a pleasure to see this fascinating event...the way the dam pushes, and then breaks...how the cria hangs out and the fluids drain from her lungs, until finally the final push and she falls to the ground in a mass of rubbery limbs breathing in the new air!

If you watch the above videos, you will hear the grunting and pushing of Mom Dovis....but the moaning is Ishtar!!  And sure enough...she got caught up in the act too, and like yawning is contagious, she also went into labor!  We saw her water break and she delivered a healthy male cria about a half hour later!

The two little ones are about 6 weeks old now and thriving!  We named the female, LH Philippa and call her Pippa...now where did that inspiration come from?!  The male we named LH Sigfried after the beloved vet Sigfried Farnon in the James Herriot books.

Our herd at Laurel Highlands Alpacas now numbers 9 and we are expecting one more cria very soon this summer!!