Sunday morning and Kloud was now 17 days overdue. I decided to vote with my feet and stay in bed. I heard a strange noise, probably just a chicken, but I went to check on the video cam in the office and there was Kloud lying on her side with something dark coming out. Shouted upstairs to Rob and started flinging on clothes and heading out to the barn. Much to the gratitude of anyone on the Pacacam, I managed to get my T shirt on before getting there.
Kloud was very calm and the feet and head was out with no obvious issues. I was concerned about the noises that the baby was making so phoned George and Judy, the owners of the farm that we got Kloud from and attempted to reproduce the sounds to them over the phone. Good news, it was normal. The thing that made me laugh was they had literally landed at the airport this morning, arriving back from a holiday in Alaska. I swear that they must have told Kloud of their holiday plans before she came to our farm and was not risking her baby to the “newbies” without back up support from George and Judy.
I texted some family and friends and they got onto the cam to share in it with us. How cool is it to be able to share the actual event with relatives in the UK.
After a rest Kloud tried to push out the rest of our little cria – took a few attempts to get those shoulders out but eventually out they came.
Closely followed by the feet and then the placenta, I will spare the general audience those images, but if anyone is interested then please let me know and I will email them.
We had bought a book about Llama and Alpaca neonatal care and I was a little concerned that he was still gulping air through his mouth, quick read of relevant paragraph and then cover mouth and blow into nostrils to inflate lungs …….. and it worked, how good do I feel now!
He was a little cold – it is quite cool under the eaves, so put the coat on him just to get his temperature up a few degrees.
Mum was loving on him and all the other Alpacas wanted to smell him, kiss him and welcome him to the herd.
Young cria are up on their feet very quickly and looking to explore their world
Also next job on the list is to find that milk bar… Check.
and last but not least work out how to coordinate four legs at the same time…… oops clearly harder to negotiate downhill.
