Quarter House Alpacas
December 08 –January 09
You certainly notice the traditional cold Winter we’re having when you have to go out every night bottle-feeding. This isn’t due to an unexpected birth thankfully, but sadly due to the sudden loss of one of our mums in November. The herd had been perfectly alright the previous evening, but the head-count wasn’t right at the morning feed, so we went up the field to see what was wrong. We found Asa, our only white female lying peacefully with her distressed and helpless cria sitting next to her. Asa had died suddenly in the night from an intestinal torsion (twisted gut) according to the post-mortem. Apparently this can suddenly happen for no reason and with no warning whatsoever. This was a big shock for us of course, and it left us with a much bigger problem - what to do about Hosta her lovely 12 week-old cria.
We hoped that another mum might adopt her, but Alpacas only have one cria (except very rarely) and don’t readily take lodgers, especially at 3 months old, so it was down to us. We caught Hosta in the field, and tried to give her some warmed goat’s milk from a bottle. She was clearly rather stressed already, and as we tried to coax her to suck the teat on the bottle, it must have all become a bit too much for her, and she suddenly collapsed in a lifeless heap. She was out cold, and even though we stood back to give her space, she just lay there. Trying not to panic, we picked her up and shook her and rubbed her all over until she flickered back to consciousness. She then joined the herd nearby, and we retired to a safe distance and kept her under observation.
Now we had the dilemma of wanting to feed her but not wanting to cause any more stress. We left her for 24 hours before trying again at the herd feeding time, and after several more careful but unsuccessful attempts, we finally got some milk into her after about 48 hours. Once she (and we) got the hang of it, she proved quite greedy, drinking up to 2 litres of goat’s milk a day. We did try powdered lamb’s milk and dried goat’s milk, but this little lady was having nothing but the real thing.
We now feel rather more competent at feeding her, though she is still very wary and easily spooked especially late at night. She spends a lot of time with her friend Hendrix and his mum Suki, but has not really been adopted by anyone sadly. She managed to give us another shock one morning after Xmas following a particularly cold night, when she refused to take a bottle, and simply sat down. It looks as if she had just got very cold in the night, but by lunchtime she managed a whole litre, and now she wears a very smart new cria coat on the coldest nights. She’s steadily putting on weight, so we have our fingers crossed she’ll survive, and we are grateful every time she takes a bottle, even on the coldest darkest nights.