It's not easy, being green.....

What part of "I'm PREGNANT" don't you understand????

Here is my Jemma, gooey from spitting off her prospective date.

Spitting you say?? What??!! Yup, alpacas spit --gasp--

There are many types of spit- it's how they communicate. They can't talk using an actual language, so they communicate through body language and, well, spitting. Let's sort them into categories, shall we?

1) There's the "you don't want to go there" fake out spit, where the paca looks menacingly over their shoulder at the other paca (who is usually sniffing under their tail) and lays their ears back. Sometimes this is accompanied by a 'pre-chew' as well, where they chew their cud rapidly to warn of impending projectiles. Usually the annoying paca leaves, but sometimes they persist, whereupon the faker then unloads on the annoying pest.

2) The "this is my space/food/shade/cria (fill in the blank)" air warning spit. This spit doesn't carry any green material, but is only air and is just a warning. But it does come with impressive posturing!

3) The "I'm 11 months pregnant, don't even LOOK at me full-on, full of green- can last up to 10 minutes or until all parties involved walk around with droopy lip and green drool due to excessive 'spittiness'- attack. This is my personal favorite. I have witnessed this every year as my pregnant girls get imminently due and these are pretty funny to behold. I can guarantee you I do not exaggerate when I say it can all start with an innocent look in the preggos general direction. Since alpacas are obligate nasal breathers, the smell from all that green causes the droopy lip and open mouth like the female above.

4) Then there is the "I'm pregnant" spit. You don't even want to know, believe me...

See, alpacas can be bred all year round, they ovulate regularly- and can be 'induced' by the actual act of breeding them. So, we as breeders do what we call behavior testing.

It goes something like this:

Princess to Die For gets haltered up for a date with Prince Charming for the first time and they are introduced.

Princess runs around, flirting and playing hard to get, while Prince tries his darndest to 'convince' Princess he's The Man by chasing her and orgling (the sound males make during this act) and trying to jump on her.

Eventually Princess decides he is the man of her dreams (or she just gets tired of running) and she drops down for a love filled interlude that ideally lasts about 20-40 minutes. Sometimes there are multiple females lined up outside the love nest, and that makes it really easy for us 2 leggers to guess which females are not pregnant, little hussies. :))

7 days pass and we introduce Princess to Prince again. We either get a repeat performance, or Princess spins around the nanosecond Prince enters the arena and blasts him full on in the face with really green spit. Prince can either a) retreat with his dignity intact, or b) continue to pursue Princess in the hopes that eventually his charm and his lovely baritone orgling will win her over. Usually he fails miserably and goes back to the boy's pen covered in green slime where he is greeted like a conquring hero anyway because, well, they are boys.

When we get continued results that end up with the female spitting off the male for 45 days, we ultrasound to see little Junior/Juniorette floating peacefully in his/her amniotic fluid, and then we resort to spit testing every 30 days until about 6 months to make sure the pregnancy doesn't slip. Roughly 345 days later, it's stork time.

Some females I have are as reliable as clocks. They breed once or twice, and then they spit and I know they are pregnant. I don't even have to ultrasound or pull blood.

See the picture above? That was my Jemma, who now lives in Texas. As you can see, she is pregnant in this picture! She was very reliable. So is my Osita. Never has to be bred more than once, even with inexperienced herdsires, and tells me she is pregnant very clearly.

I have never had to ultrasound her in the 10 years I have owned her.

Others, like first time maidens, are not as reliable. They may spit, then drop and continue to spit. Or, run and not drop, but not spit either. Generally first timers get a US on our ranch. By the second time around, they are usually more reliable with spit testing.

The humorous part in all this is the human element. I mean, we take the girls to the boys or however we are doing it this time, and then we monitor the ritual closely.
Well, some of my girls take it closer than I would like. They know me, and trust me, therefore when they are pregnant, they run to me to save them from the big scary Macho chasing them. I am sure you can see where I am going with this... I usually get green myself. It is quite comical, I'm told, to see me ducking and running from said harassed female who in her great desire to flee the pen forgets to turn her head to aim the spit his way, causing me to dodge the great flying green as I go. For the record, while it is only green food that is partially digested, it stinks, stains, and causes me to run around with my mouth open drooling, trying not to breath in the fumes too.

To let you know, my alpacas do not spit on me intentionally for no reason. Occasionally I am involved in a food fight, or domestic dispute through merely being in the wrong place at the wrong time, but the only time I have ever been spit on intentionally was while weighing a female's brand new cria (What are you doing with my baby???!!!) or giving a shot in the butt, and let's be honest, wouldn't we all like to spit at our doctor when that happens to us??

On to my Arwen Undomiel. It is fall 2006, and she is spitting, and spitting... and isn't pregnant. Last real breeding was 9 months ago, and we thought she was pregnant, but no, the ultrasound in August says, not so much.


Now Arwen needs a guy who doesn't get discouraged easily. She doesn't like breeding, and will sometimes spit even as she is dropping for breeding. Enter Luxor- he is a "yes means no" kind of Macho.
In very early August (4 days before the ultrasound to be exact) during a cool spell we had tried her again. She dropped for a breeding! Trouble is, it only lasted 5 minutes... tops. Then she popped up like a Jack in the Box and was done.
Now Luxor is potent, and he has a nice, er, um, "set" but 5 minutes is really not going to cut it. The actual time it takes the male to reach the right spot is pretty long, both in distance and in actual time, not to mention the rest of the act required for pregnancy to result.

So, come October we are thinking, she has got to be open still, and we start trying again in the cooler weather. She is acting so pregnant, and we are unable to convince her she couldn't possibly get pregnant from a >5 minute breeding. So we look over her behavior all year long, and consider she might have a retained CL making her think she is pregnant when she's not, and talk to the vet about using a hormone to dislodge it, but we would never do this without another ultrasound to make sure there isn't really a cria in there. The most common reason for being unreceptive, is pregnancy! Hearing horror stories about breeders who use Estrumate, thinking their female is not really pregnant, and then the next day finding a dead cria in the pasture were not needed for us, we know better.
So here we go for yet another ultrasound.... and lo an behold, she is pregnant!

Ah, the joys of being a breeder. The ups, the downs, the spits and misses. The sting of being wrong....... who knew what we were really in for 10 years ago? Not I.

The moral of the story? When you breed alpacas, wear rain gear and protective face covering, or risk getting covered in green slime..... um, nope, that's not it.......

When in doubt, trust your female and get an ultrasound, or, two or three. LOL, and yes, nearly immaculate conception is entirely possible.
Oh, and Go Luxor!!

Tune in next week for the "How to Drive Your 2-legger Crazy with False Labor" chapter. I laughed, I cried.... it moved me, and it will you too!
Slainte~
Rachelle

A new Alpaca arrival!

And here she is! Narya, named after Gandalf's ring, in the Lord of the Rings trilogy.
Thank you Silfiriel for this beautiful name!

Narya made her appearance on my birthday, which was fabulous. This is too funny, because this is actually the third cria born on my birthday in the 8 years we have been breeding! And they have all been girls too, which is such a blessing. First there was Arwen Undomiel in 2000- who you see as my profile picture. Then there was Rosie Cotton last year, and now Narya!
Cool beans methinks.

So, what now follows is a photo montage of her birth, enjoy!


Her first appearance, the amniotic fluid filled sac, with just a hint of her nose all pink showing. This is when the alpaca owner starts playing the "Guess that color" game! So far, so good, this is what we want to see.
After the sac ruptures, you should see the head present- nose and toes we call it- so far, right on! Trouble starts when you see feet first with no head, or don't see any progression at all after the pushing starts.
This cracked me up. Here she is, nose and toes (and legs) sticking out, and Lady G. is having a snack without a care in the world!! HA!
This is textbook presentation, very, very good. After the cria stayed there for a while, I thought Lady G. would appreciate a little help. The chest cavity of an alpaca cria is actually the largest part of the body to deliver, and sometimes they need just a little gentle traction. Seeing as how this was Lady G.'s first birth, I thought I would help. So I pulled carefully during a big push, and out she came!

Funny how first timers always deliver right by the poo pile, they think they have a big poo to push out! LOL

All crias are wobbly at first, some more than others. They have been so cramped in there that usually they take a day or so to straighten out, sometimes longer. They can have loosey-goosey ligaments, or sometimes contracted tendons from their position in the womb. After about 35 births, I can tell who has trouble beyond the norm, and who doesn't. Narya has some trouble with being a bit down on her pasterns, with her ligaments loose in the front legs, and a little tight in the back. Notice how her back legs aren't straight? All this will straighten (no pun intended) itself out in time, without any manipulation from me. She was a bit dysmature, not in days as she was born at 339 days gestation, so well within normal limits, but her teeth are not erupted and her legs tell me she was perhaps not completely done cooking in the oven. This happens sometimes.
Here she is saying hello to the group. Mom and she were placed in a smaller pen to bond together. You can see Rosie's black head and Elbereth's fawn one hanging over the panels. All the other alpacas are very curious when a new cria is born, and they sometimes make nuisances of themselves, getting in the way of nursing and knocking over the new babe. My llama boy Mithril is their "nanny guardian" and he was very, very sweet with her!
Trying to get the hang ov nursing, and this is where I first got my hunch she might have some trouble. See, she was a bit too wobbly to be able to stay under mom in the correct position and latch on to a teat. Combine that with Lady G. who has a huge udder, and her teats were so engorged Narya couldn't latch on to them. It got freezing here, of course! So we put on a coat for her, but as you can see, she is much smaller than the smallest (warm) coat we had! So we wrapped her in a wool scarf, put the coat over that, and I put a sock on her neck (can't see it in this picture).
She won't give up on nursing though, and that's wonderful! So, in concern that she wouldn't get adequate colostrum from mom in that most crucial 24 hour time period, we supplemented her with cow's colostrum every 2 hours all day and night. Saturday morning Lady G's udder was so engorged, we had to put hot packs on it and massage it for her to relieve some of the pressure. Narya was still too wobbly to latch on, and was getting lethargic, so we started tubing, vs bottle feeding her as she wasn't drinking any more voluntarily, with the colostrum and goats milk to get her jump started. The first 48 hours is so scary. Lady G. is an excellent first time momma, and clicks and nudges her babe into the right position to nurse, then stands like a statue while the baby sucks on and licks everywhere just trying to get it right, but if the cria isn't able to stay in that position, or latch on- she will be in serious trouble.

After a successful day of tube feeding, and a weight gain of 1/4 lb, I believe Narya is out of the woods, and we will continue to supplement her as needed, but mommas udder is starting to soften up, and baby is only getting stronger. Her legs are straightening up nicely, and we expect mom and baby both to be a great team within a few days.

Here she is this morning, without her coat and enjoying the sunshine!

I hope you enjoyed Narya's birthing experience, and now I am breathing a sigh of relief, as I know her first hurdle is over. With a cria who doesn't get mother's colostrum in the first 24 hours, there is always a risk or FTT- Failure to Thrive, which means the cria did not get adequate antibody transfers. This condition can cause the cria to be susceptible to infection and the risk of sudden death goes up dramatically.

With us getting colostrum in her, starting her on antibiotics, and tubing her regularly, she has a good chance to bypass this condition.

I always say 7 days is the clincher. After 7 days of life, I rest easy. So, I will pray, and we will all see Narya next week, healthy and strong!

Slainte~
Rachelle