My Lazarus Moment

Last night one of the girls that was 10 days off eleven months was clearly in labour and in trouble. Chas was out delivering two stud males we have sold so it was down to Joshua and me. I called the vet  but then this huge red ball of something emerged from the alpaca. I looked at it with some horror, broke the membrane and was greeted with a tail, at least half the bottom with two little legs tucked up underneath. I realised it was too late to push it back in and sort out the legs so pulled it out rolling back the membrane as I went. The cria just lay there, no heartbeat and not breathing with its big brown eyes wide open. Remembering what my grandpa used to do with lambs I swung it around a bit, slapped it, but there was no response. In desperation I shoved some pieces of grass up its nose and on the third attempt it sneezed, started to breathe and I could see its heart banging away. Joshua had sprinted up to the barn for the spray for the navel and then sprinted towards the washing line to get a towel to dry it off. You can sprint when you are 20! There were a lot of ”phews” all round as we realised it was going to live. In fact we were very pleased with ourselves as this sort of thing is normally a Chas job. The mother, who is usually a bit arsey, was as good as gold and after a few minutes we took both of them into the barn, put a coat on the cria and cancelled the emergency vet. Minutes later there was a screeching of brakes as the vet turned up anyway and agreed with me that both were fine. The cria, a white Jaquinto daughter, was sitting up pretty quickly and stood to try and suckle. It was very wobbly on the back legs so when Chas got back we gave it plasma (11.30 the traffic was frightful) and went to bed. This morning the cria took some milk from the bottle and we turned her mother and her out into the field. We have seen her suckling during the day so all seems well. This is only the third breech birth we have had in over 12 years.

I was speaking on the phone to someone last week and they asked about difficult births. I said we hadn’t had any this year – I should not have said that as we have had two in a row.