Holy Criation!

by Carole Van House

In September of 1995, my partner, Donna Pearre and I were continuing our year long search for a way to make our eighty acre farm into a family business. We had considered and discarded such ideas as raising asparagus (the growing season in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan is very short), boarding horses (too much liability for too little return), a bed and breakfast (interesting, but our ranch style house hardly lends itself to spacious accommodations). We were looking for a farm based business which could help me shelter some of my income from my private practice as a psychologist (after overhead, Uncle Sam and the State, I got to keep a whopping one third of what I made). Our menagerie of four horses, three dogs, and four aging rabbits earned their keep with love and companionship, but their feed and vet expenses constituted a serious pinhole in our budget balloon. And as two women who have a reputation as a soft touch for furry creatures, we had a hard time imagining ourselves smiling broadly as animals we had raised pulled out of the driveway on the way to the slaughter house. No way!

Then Donna called me at my office with enough excitement to befit a lottery grand prize winner to announce that she had discovered the perfect solution: We could breed alpacas!

Alpacas? Alpacas, hmmm. Visions of Perry Como's sweaters flashed across my mind. I had some idea of what an alpaca could be used for but no real picture of the animal emerged from my mental file cabinet. Donna had read an article in Small Farm Today by Anthony Stachowski, DVM which described the wonders of alpacas and their excellent investment potential. By the time I got home that evening, Donna had a table full of notes from phone calls she had made to A.O.B.A. and to breeders all across the country. She poured out enthusiasm for the generosity of all her contacts and what she had learned, and by 7:30 that evening I was an ardent convert. We spent much of the next week on the phone and with the doggedness which marked the pursuit of our doctoral degrees, we obsessively researched alpacas. By the end of another week, we had made the fourteen hour trip to Ohio to see and touch the real thing. I remember reassuring each other, "We're only here to look and talk, not to buy".

What can I say? We were swept off our feet! One bred female, one yearling female, and a weanling female with long eye lashes and a come hither hum were ours by nightfall. We reluctantly left them in Ohio as we returned home to carry out the metamorphosis of our place into Avalon Farm Alpacas! We threw ourselves into barn improvements, fence building, shed building, and every night we poured over the avalanche of magazines, journals, books, price lists, and advertisements which our A.O.B.A. inquiries and subscriptions brought our way. Our business plan emerged over those first few months. We decided to emphasize genetic and color diversity in our breeding program. We chose quality breeding stock primarily full Peruvian or half-Peruvian/half-Chilean colored females, and bred them to outside Peruvian herdsires. During our first year, we purchased fourteen females (mostly maiden), selected herdsires, and bred those females who were mature enough. By the summer of 1996, we were expecting six early winter babies with three more due in the spring of 1997.

Earlier in the year, we talked to several breeders who had recommended that we take the neonatal care class offered at the A.O.B.A. Conference, and we were fortunate to attend the class, taught by Dr. Pat Long and Dr. Karen Tim at the Conference in Denver. I remember facing the first class with a bit of a queeze in my middle, but this soon gave way to my fascination with what we heard, saw and did. We learned of signs and stages of labor, normal presentation, and dystocia, that frightening word that we heard only applied in 5% of alpaca births. (Phew, that's a relief; chances are we may never see one!) But it was reassuring to practice assessing the crias' position in the birth canal, repositioning legs, necks, and backs. I learned so much valuable information in so short a time. We heard several fellow participants say that they were attending because their spouse, friend, or neighboring breeder took the class in past years and credited their learning with subsequently saving the lives of crias and mothers. Little did we know then just how valuable this class would prove to be as we faced the greater possibility of dystocias with our first time moms.

As due dates approached, we accumulated a sterile lubricant, a thermometer, a scale, latex gloves, full arm gloves that go up to your arm pits, Nolvasan, baby bottles---all the components of a cria delivery kit. I felt an energy akin to the nesting frenzy I experienced just prior to giving birth to my daughter twenty six years ago. I got up in the middle of the night, every night week after week to check on Shasta and Brista (who just became more and more overdue). We checked and rechecked breeding dates. In The Alpaca Book by Eric Hoffmann and Dr. Murray E. Fowler, we read that gestation can be from 335 to 360 days, with a rare possibility of up to 13 months. Were we going to set a record? I discovered that teats can be spied easily if I squatted and peeked as they made a trip to the dung pile. Up close and personal I determined that Shasta's teats looked like four stubby fingers in a pink glove; Brista's looked like pink bumps. Their abdomens were sagging lower and lower. They couldn't cush anymore---no place to tuck in their legs. I began to believe that only other breeders own alpacas who have babies.

On November 22, Donna came into the barn to say that she had a feeling that Anjelica was going into labor. Anjelica? So much for Brista and Shasta! How could she go into labor, it was 6:00 p.m. and dark outside. What about how they have their babies in the morning or early afternoon? What business did she have going into labor just because she was eleven months to the day from her first breeding date? We herded the girls into the barn and our beautiful full Peruvian vicuna-pattern fawn, Anjelica, proceeded with the labor. We grabbed the baby kit and stood like quarterbacks ready to receive the hike from center. But Lord, no, here came a head but no legs. We could see enough of the cria to see that it was a beautiful dark fawn color, just what we had hoped for. Donna ran to the house to call the vet and I donned a pair of latex gloves and covered my hands with sterile lubricant.

One thing you should know about is that when the Creator planned me, the plan changed halfway through. My height barely qualifies me for Disneyland rides but I have the hands and feet of an Amazon. One index finger was all I could insert beside the neck, but that was enough to feel two bent knees pressed against the pelvic bone. As Donna returned to say the vet would be here in a half hour, all I could do was to wail "My hands are too big!" All the other female alpacas became totally still; not a move, not a hum. I cleared the membrane from the nose and mouth, and the cria made gurgling sounds as it struggled to breathe. Donna whipped into action. She called on her memory of that practice we had in Denver and managed to turn the cria's lower legs so they could clear the canal. The next contraction pushed the cria halfway out, and Anjelica went down and laid very still. The baby struggled to breathe, so we decided to assist by gently pulling back and down like we had been taught. At last one more contraction and our first cria was born; a beautiful dark fawn little boy.

Anjelica struggled to her feet and greeted her newborn bundle of wriggling wet fleece. We moved them into our neonatal stall, and Donna passed me the hair dryer, my weapon against the 32 degree temperature in the barn. Our vet arrived and sat with us for an hour enjoying the show. Anjelica's head was high as she preened and showed off her handsome son to her herdmates. This first time mom must have read all the books on mothering because everything went like clockwork. She hummed and clucked encouragement as the baby got used to dry land and discovered how to stay up on those four long legs. Within an hour the baby was nursing, what a precocious cria! The placenta was discharged intact, scooped up, and disposed of. At last we could relax...for a while.

But what of Brista and Shasta, surely Anjelica's demonstration of birthing would push them along. But no, days went by. Then on Sunday, December 1st our waiting was over. I decided to clean the barn thoroughly that morning since we had a cold but sunny day and all the girls and our new cria, named Royal Peruvian Valor, could be outside. Around noon, Brista separated herself from the others and seemed to be going down and getting up a lot. Her labor had started. We herded her into the barn where she paced and paced. Down. Up. Down again. By 2:00 p.m., a fluid filled bubble the size of a handball emerged, and then we saw a rounded form in the bubble. Oh no, here we go again ...a head with no legs. Donna called the vet who said she was on her way.

We called our friends at Magical Farms in Ohio, and Cindy Shipp, one of the farm managers, agreed to stay on the phone with us to give us support until the vet arrived. Minutes later, Brista was still struggling with the head. Her vulva was stretched taut over the snout and the skull was yet to come. Brista endured our attempts to gently massage and lubricate the vulva but initially emitted a few high pitched cries. As the vulva dilated, at last she pushed the skull through. Holy wa!, this head was much larger than Ellie's. Then Donna was able to feel one leg which was wedged over the head, the other leg was far back. In Donna's focus on being helpful she forgot to take her sweatshirt off. The sleeve was in the way of being able to reach far enough inside. As I looked up from my post at Brista's side, Donna was struggling to extricate herself. Up and over her head went the sweatshirt but the flannel shirt with buttoned sleeves came along. A tug of war ensued. Woman against bondage. She looked and sounded like the Incredible Hulk as buttons shot across the stall. At last, clad in her T-shirt, she was free to proceed.

Donna struggled to reposition the forward leg and was finally able to slip it around under the head and neck. But that other leg was far back and pinned between the body and the pelvic wall. At last we heard the vet's car coming up the drive. We had resorted to prayers several times already and again they were answered. Our vet, Dr. Jeanne Wilcox, readied herself for taking over. Several attempts were needed to bring the leg forward but at last, at 2:30 p.m. our second cria, a strapping boy, was free. Brista, stoic as ever, seemed somewhat relieved! As the smallest of our bred females, Brista had produced a whopping 23 pound cria. Go figure. In tribute to her super effort we named her cria Peruvian Tribute. Dr. Wilcox checked over Brista, gave her a shot of penicillin and recommended that we give her 1.5 cc of oxytocin since her teats were quite small and her bag did not appear very full. Once she assured herself and us that all was well, she left for home. Two minutes after the vet left, Shasta started to pace from one corner of the barn to another. She'd go down, get up, pace, go to the poop pile and then repeat the pattern again and again. We gratefully watched as Shasta produced a little foot, then a nose, then another foot as she presented us with another male cria in texbook fashion at 5:30 p.m. At first we were worried that he was so little until we realized that he only seemed small in comparison to our other new arrival. In fact he weighed 17.8 pounds. Shasta's abundant colostrum gave her little guy a great jump start with an IgG of 3000 mg/dl!

We had both developed a special affection for Shasta over the past months. There is an inexplicable sweetness about her which has become even more apparent as she attends to each of our three crias, clucking and humming tenderly. She seems to have taken on the role of the patient nanny who willingly endures their romping, bumping enthusiasm. Her little guy, whom we have named Peruvian Nevar (Spanish, meaning "to make snowwhite"), is as easy going and sweet as his mom.

A bonus came our way the day after the boys were born when we learned that our most recently acquired female had produced a beautiful golden fawn female cria in Ohio on Thanksgiving Day; given her birthdate and our good fortune, we named her Peruvian Autumn Blessing. She and the three male crias are healthy and rambunctious. We were fortunate that their dams, who had all been pregnant for the first time, proved to be good moms with ample milk for their crias. Anjelica, Brista and Shasta seem not to hold grudges about any indignities we foisted on them during our first attempts to be alpaca midwives. Every day Valor, Tribute and Nevar scamper around the pasture goading each other into faster and funnier antics. We look forward to the arrival of our fifth and sixth winter crias soon, and I have renewed my midnight and four a.m. sojourns to the barn, just in case. *

UPDATE*

The fifth cria, Sweet Silver Jubilee, a beautiful grey female with a white tuxedo front, was born in Ohio to our grey mom, Sugar Rose on January 14, 1997. She and Autumn Blessing are great pals who both reside with us at Avalon Farm.

On January 24, 1997, AFA Royal Peruvian Aristocrat (Ari), sired by Accoyo Royal Fawn, was born at our farm to PPPeruvian Sonoma. We are delighted to report that this handsome light fawn cria with wonderfully soft and crimpy fiber had a relatively uneventful birth.