Cria grafting again

So there we were on Thursday all excited because our former show girl, Isabella Star, had just given birth to her 2nd cria ever and was actually letting the little guy nurse.  You see her first cria from last year — the one and only infamous Booger, who it should be noted is now down the road living the Life of Fiber-pet Riley — she had rejected almost immediately. However given Isabella’s quality and her genetic line (she is the granddaughter of 4P Isabella who was also the dam of Accoyocusani), she was given one more chance to prove that her behavior last year was hopefully just a fluke. After all her mom, her granddam, and her aunt have all been excellent moms with stellar track records here, so it just didn’t add up that this female would have any issues in that department. It had been poor Booger that she had rejected after all and quite frankly after seeing his fleece architecture (or more to the point the lack there of) ourselves soon after his birth, we weren’t without some sympathy for her reaction to her baby last year either. Booger is what is known politely ’round these parts as a “miss-fire.” There are of course often more colorful words used that come in front but I’ll leave those to your imagination.

Well fast forward to Thursday again and you could then understand our excitement at Isabella’s seeming acceptance of her new baby. Unfortunately we soon learned that our excitement was premature, as just a couple of hours later she started rejecting this year’s little guy too. Phooey. Or something like that. We tried all of the dirty tricks in our proverbial book including narcing her out with a mild sedative. Think Valium for alpacas. Mother’s little helper? That sort of worked but not for long. She would let the cria nurse again while she was woozy but then kick it away as the the drugs wore off. It was just not meant to be.

We knew that we would have to give the the new little guy a bottle at least temporarily until we could find another solution. Jen and Kim did have a plan though: they were going to try to get him nursing off of another female after the dam-to-be-named-later birthed out by convincing someone in the maternity ward that they had given birth to twins. It’s something we had done here before so they we had a pretty good idea of how to pull it off.

Luckily for us the very next day, Friday, our female Saphira gave birth to a beautiful little Elite Legend girl. The youngest daughter of our beloved (and now deceased) Tessora as well as the older sister of our young Herdsire, Tenacious, Saphira met all the criteria we needed in an adoptive mom. Namely that she had a history of good mothering, had had an excellent milk supply last year when she nursed her little guy, Anurin, and she was in great body condition in spite of having just carried her current baby for 352 days. Though the CCNF midwives were a little late to the party and missed out on the majority of the amniotic fluid  from when the sack broke, Kim did mange to get a little fluid out of some membrane from around one of the little girl’s front feet as she was coming out. By pouring that amniotic fluid over the head and tail of Isabella’s little guy as well as the odd piece of fetal membrane from his soon to be newborn step-sister, Saphira quickly took to the idea of having two crias instead of just the one. In fact the bigger challenge at first was convincing the little boy that he could nurse off of his new surrogate mom without being kicked away! Though Jen spent a couple of hours playing at what she called “udder referee,” making sure that the little girl (it’s been decided that she’s going to be name CCNF Tessora after her granddam, BTW) got her fair share of her momma’s colostrum, by that afternoon the kids had worked it all out and by yesterday morning had even learned to take turns nursing off of their mom. One of the cutest things is the way the two “siblings” have quickly bonded and play together, bouncing around together and humming at each other, not just their Mom. It also funny to see how quickly Isabella’s little guy bonded to his new adoptive dam: whenever Saphira and her two crias are cushed down together it is actually the little boy who, having now fully bought into the program, snuggles right up against Saphira, while his sister is nearby but not nearly as clingy. Perhaps it’s the byproduct of the poor little dude having experienced rejection for the first 24 hours of his life? As far as his biological mother goes this latest birth and rejection of her cria closes the book on Isabella as a breeding female. She’s back living with a another group of females at the Arena away from her baby and gave only the most cursory of hums in his general direction when we took him away. Pity but thems are the breaks: there are enough great moms in our herd, that there is no need to further propagate bad maternal traits regardless of how many show banners or ribbons were won by the female in question. For now all is well in her cria’s world anyway in spite of Isabella’s indifference: he’s got an adoptive dam that loves him, a baby sister to play with, and an ample milk supply to feed off of. It’s all good.

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