Baby Pics

[maystone]

He's doing OK, but not great. His temperature is normal, which is a minor miracle since it's cold and damp (we just had a rain of ice pellets), but he's not nursing, and when he tries, Gertie moves away. Dar is feeding him goat colostrum to supplement; he takes that well, so that's good. Poor Dar is so tired, and I'm only good for short bursts of activity these days.

Anyway, behind the cut are two pictures of the new boy.


He's about 18 hours old in this pic. You can see the apricot
coloring on him.


Dar brought him outside thinking the daylight would help
him figure out the nursing thing. He only lasted about
3 minutes because it's so cold and damp outside.
That's mom Gertie, and big brother Valentino.

Comments

[brighty18.livejournal.com]

Oh!

I'm still thinking good thoughts for all of you!!

[maystone.livejournal.com]

Thank you! All good thoughts are appreciated.

[drocera.livejournal.com]

Alpacas are the cutest, sweetest creatures in the world! I hope this little guy picks up soon.

Seems to me, after reading the many posts about you and Dar's newborn crias, that it's somewhat normal for them not to automatically thrive. There always seems to be some worry for you guys after the birth of one of these little guys! Is this normal or am I just remembering incorrectly?

[maystone.livejournal.com]

No you're not misremembering. We've had to work on the last three crias right after they were born, but that's because each of them was born in the cold. Normally people breed their alpacas to be born late spring/early summer when the temps are warm and there's plenty of sunshine. Crias can't regulate their body temperature for the first 24 hours, so when they're born in cool or cold weather, their body temps plummet and you have to warm them up.

Plus the weather in southern Ontario has been bad all year, which led to all of the animals - cows, goats, sheep, alpacas, horses - having later births while the dams tried to hold out for warmer, dryer days. Lots of difficult births this year, but it's not normally like this. The usual thing is for them to birth unassisted, and then cria is up and walking and nursing within an hour or so. Valentino was the last easy birth that we had here.

We have one more to go, and that one is going to be pure hell, because Delilah will be giving birth in winter. It's all because we couldn't separate the males out in time. They were too young by the calendar to be able to impregnate a female, but it turns out our boys are precocious :)

[gatezilla.livejournal.com]

Hang in there, little guy!

[maystone.livejournal.com]

He's trying! He's a feisty little thing, for sure.

[sparky77.livejournal.com]

How much does he weigh? He looks so little! Poor thing! Is bringing him inside a possibility or will that be too traumatic for both him and Gertie?

[maystone.livejournal.com]

We don't even have a weight on him yet. Sigh. His temp is OK, so it would be better to keep out there with Gertie. The big problem is that he still isn't nursing. Although Neo took a couple of days, too. He's a good size, really. Not as big as Sparky was, but bigger than Neo when he was born. I think the cria coat makes him look smaller :)

Valentino gave this sad, shocked squawk when he saw his mom with a new baby. It was funny and heartbreaking at the same time, but he's getting into being the big brother now.

See what happens when you go away? Babies!

[sparky77.livejournal.com]

Ha! Poor Valentino, no longer the baby. I'm sure he'll be a fabulous big brother and teach the baby all his trouble-making ways.

Is Hannibal definitely the father or could it be Adama?

I'm going to come back and there are going to be all these babies running around! I can't wait!

And talking about babies... how are mine? Are Pico and Lexy behaving themselves?

[maystone.livejournal.com]

We think this is Adama's son, because Gertie always throws color when she's bred to color so a Hannie baby would be darker. We'll have the DNA run when we register the crias.

Your babies are fine. Pico really attached himself to Marie, so he was a bit verklempt when she went back to Ireland. He sleeps in my room a lot, and I pet him and give him milk, so he likes me.

Lexy is back and forth, as always. She's asleep in her favorite big shoe box (boot box, really) as I write this. We know for a fact now that she hangs out in the barn next door, playing with the kittens, eating the food, and snoozing on the comfy chair that they put in there :)

[sparky77.livejournal.com]

Maya has a cat who looks just like Pico and he sometimes sleeps with me and hogs the bed just like Pico does *sniff*

[hnybny.livejournal.com]

C'mon little guy!

[vampirefan.livejournal.com]

he is adorable!

wow... so many babies!