All they need is love…

The photo at left is of two siblings sharing a midday nap in the sun, though in this case the siblings in question are not twins. Every good picture deserves a good story of sorts…

We owe much to our beloved female Opal. It’s not enough that after winning multiple Championships herself, including two at the Futurity, her first two crias, Charming and Invictus, were both front line show animals for us in their own right. Charming has since been bred and has joined her dam in our colored foundation herd, while Invictus has already been pencilled in to join the Stud Barn here next year when he turns 2. Not a bad start! On top of all of that quality that flows through and from Opal though she is also an extremely nurturing alpaca mom. She doesn’t just look after her own kids though, she also likes to play den mother. Last year it was not at all uncommon for Opal to be nursing Invictus as well as two or three other crias all at the same time, some times literally. It’s not that that those other crias had bad moms either. Opal’s udder was really just like the neighborhood joint where everyone would go and hang out after school. If Aunty Opal would let you nurse too, why not have at it? She really never seemed to mind. It actually became a bit of a running joke here that seemingly whenever a new cria was born and introduced into Opy’s feed group with its mom, that she would go and give it a sniff, and hum at it. “There she goes, she’s going to take on that one too!” At the time we just found it amusing, never thinking that Opal’s nurturing instincts and urge to semi-adopt seemingly everyone else’s cria crias would come to be so important a year later.

Fast forward to summer, 2011. Back in early August after several days of suffering from what looked like an on again/off again case of colic one of our adult females, Love Angel, went into shock and we ended up having to euthanize her. Of course as difficult as it was to lose a member of our herd, in this case it was additionally complicated by the fact that Love Angel had given birth to a little beige girl about 10 days prior to her passing. While we had quickly started giving the little girl bottles of every variety and type as her mother became sick, she was really was not very taken with the concept herself. It’s not as though we haven’t had to do that routine before either. The reality of a herd this size is that bottle babies happen. This pretty young thing was a bit of head scratcher though. No matter what we tried she really just wouldn’t take to it. We were quite frankly getting to the end of our bag of tricks and starting to mutter things under our breath about natural selection and survival of the fittest, never a good sign.

The fates had other plans for her though. Thankfully just as her mom left us, a certain black female of great maternal repute was next door getting ready to birth out her 2011 cria, by happenstance that very same day. As it was, Opal had already spent a couple of weeks of sticking her nose over the dividing pen panels checking out everyone else’s newborns as they were introduced into the population of the newest maternity ward (Note: during the birthing season we have maternity groups that top out at 15 pairs of dams and their respective crias at the Arena. Due females birth out in one pen/corral/paddock, then spend 24 to 48 hours in a bonding pen with their newborns, and the two of them are then released into a separate pen/corral/paddock where all of those mom/cria pairs will stay, often until weaning when the crias hit 6 months of age). Don’t think we hadn’t noticed as our frustration grew with rejecto-bottle-girl that Opal had given her the old sniff and hum too! We — and yes, for the record yet again, that would be the “we” that is my beloved — then decided to get a little cheeky and see if perhaps the matter could be forced. On the second day postpartum, when Opal and her white male cria (see multiple earlier posts/rants too numerous to count on that subject) were about to be released to go and join the other moms and newborns, Jen instead took Love Angel’s little girl and stuck her in the bonding pen with them. Though Opal wasn’t at first too keen on letting this other cria nurse independently, only allowing it when her own guy was under there too, she soon softened her stance. Within 10 days Love Angel’s little girl (who is now also known around the farm as Opal’s little girl) went from taking bits of occasionally proffered bottles with little or no weight gains to nursing regularly off of her adopted mom and regularly gaining of +/- .5 lb/day!

It’s not only have Opy that has bonded to the little girl though. As the photo above clearly shows, so has her surrogate brother. Opal’s crias were amongst those shorn the other day as were finishing that task for the season. Out of precaution we always put of our newly shorn knee-biters back into a bonding pen with their dams after they are shorn until we’re sure their mom’s are letting them nurse again. Traumatic as that can be normally, Opal had to go through the double-whammy watching both of her kids sheared consecutively. She was the only alpaca mom that day with two crias to accept again with their funky new hair cuts. She of course passed her test with flying colors.