Welcome little one…

We had our first cria of 2013 born on Tuesday morning, though not without some drama. Oh no, wouldn’t want the first birth in almost 6 months to be routine and easy. What fun would that be after all? As luck would have it our retired Champion show girl, La Vie en Rose, whose 11 month due date was on May 7th, had been showing some discomfort since Monday afternoon. Though Jen and Kim had watched her quite closely that day, there was nothing that set off any real alarms or that made them think that we, her human caretakers, needed to intervene…at least not at that time.

As we moved into Tuesday morning though with the same discomfort and no signs of active laboring or a cria, the realities of our crazy spring schedule came into play. With Kim off work and starting a week of well deserved vacation before the crias start flying in earnest around here come the month of June, and with Jen and I both with afternoon errands to run in completely different directions, my better half thought that she had better see what was going on with La Vie and her baby. Especially since we hadn’t seen much fetal movement of late from what had previously been a very active cria.

As it turned out, La Vie had a uterine torsion – a twist of the uterus itself. Those things don’t resolve on their own! After unsuccessfully trying to straighten the torsion out the old fashioned way by laying the female on her side and having one person (Jen) apply pressure on the cria from the outside, while the others (in this case Eric, Jason, and myself) gently rolled the female from one side to the other in an attempt to untwist the uterus, Jen decided that she had better just scrub up again and go and get the baby out.

Fortunately she was able to manipulate things and straighten the torsion out from the inside. Jen then went and got the one front leg of the cria that was bent back at the knee to join its opposite number. With the head and two legs now both presenting normally inside the birth canal, La Vie was good to go. With some additional lube to help get baby’s the head out through the vulva and some good pushes from mom, Jen helped La Vie deliver a healthy little Cameron daughter in just a matter of minutes! Of course for added excitement, the placenta started to make an early appearance as well — something which no one likes to see — soon after the cria’s head first popped out. All of which just meant that my favorite alpaca midwife had to work a little faster to get the new cria out and breathing on her own.

So, live baby? Check. Colored female too? Check. Victory is ours! Uh…not so fast guys. See the problem with uterine torsions and even mild dystocias is that they tend to not be pleasant experiences for the alpaca females that go through them. As though the normal presentation and birth of a cria couldn’t be potentially challenging enough for a first time mom like La Vie (big baby, small orifice…you do the math), after being put on her side, semi-restrained, and  then rolled around by us, she had also had the pleasure of most of my wife’s forearm up in there trying to set everything right. It wasn’t an experience bound to create lots of positive associations. As such it’s safe to to say that La Vie’s first inclination towards her newborn daughter lay somewhere between disdain and out and out loathing. All she knew was that while causing her great pain, we had contrived to take that thing out of her, and she was not now in any sort of mood to view it positively. Thankfully in the short term the cria had us. The little girl had to spend the first 90 minutes of her life essentially under our protection, as when her dam did finally start to acknowledge her existence, La Vie would come over and in a seeming fit of rage scream, spit, and try to stomp her daughter.

In one dark moment, we both fantasized about bringing in our our beloved Opal off of pasture. Opie, who had just had her 2012 cria weaned less than a week ago, has been the biological mother of three (Invictus, Charming, Obsidian) while also simultaneously acting as the adoptive/surrogate mother extraordinaire to many. Could we bond her to this little one? If push came to shove, we probably could have. We put that idea in our back pocket and battled on though, even though the situation wasn’t immediately improving quite the way we would have liked.

Once the baby could stand, La Vie graduated from stomping her, to just running over whenever the cria would make some sudden movements and chest butting her down to the ground. It was, technically, an improvement. We’ve seen our fair share of maternal rejection cases over the years, though admittedly never one that played out quite like that. Thankfully in our time birthing alpacas, we have also learned a trick or two!  A couple of shots of oxytocin (“the hormone that makes you love things”), combined with a mild sedative we got from our vet, slowly but surely did the trick. After medicating mom, we started with me holding La Vie around the neck while Jen held the cria underneath and let her latch onto her mom for the first time. Though La Vie’s intial reaction was to scream and recoil from the cria’s touch on her udder, her maternal instincts — almost against her conscious will — took over some and in the end I was barely restraining her at all. This led to a couple of hours of La Vie slowly but surely showing increasing interest in her baby. She went from running over to it in a threatening manner to just walking up to her and giving her a little sniff. We also noticed that she started to gradually respond to her daughter’s plaintive little hums. A guarantee of nothing but a very good sign nonetheless.

The baby was born at 11 AM and finally by mid-afternoon we felt good enough about things, that after Jen gave the cria a bottle to ensure she could keep up her strength, we left them alone together in the Arena’s warm room. Upon returning to the farm late that afternoon, Jen found the cria nursing unassisted from her momma with La Vie’s full consent. I suppose there’s an argument to be made that one of the best things we did that afternoon was to get the heck out of the way and let nature do its thing. Whether our intervention ultimately prevented permanent rejection of the newborn cria or really just sped up the kicking in of La Vie’s natural maternal instincts is ultimately academic. What matters is that after a rather traumatic birth, we have a healthy cria and a first time mom who has completely bonded to her. That really is a victory.

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