Sad Day
Last week we had a very sad morning on the farm. Just as I was finishing the poop scooping in the “maternity ward” pasture I saw something that looked like a garbage bag that was half buried. When I got closer I realized that it was a stillborn fetus - still encased in its amniotic birth sac. Lisa Marie had aborted her ten month fetus. If the cria had survived it would have been a dark brown male.
Alpacas are usually easy birthers - with cria and Mom up and running within the hour, but there are the 20% that don’t make it. We did not send this little one off to the lab for testing - if another cria is still born we will certainly order complete diagnostic testing. However - this one was dead before it hit the ground. A very sad morning for us. Thankfully the dam, Lisa Marie seems to have suffered no ill affects. Since she was a first time mom, she may not have been fully aware that she was even pregnant, until seeing this unfortunate cria born during the night.
Alpacas are nearly always born between 10:00 am and 3:00 pm. It is not unheard of for a cria to be born in the early morning hours - but if the dam is laboring after 4:00 pm there is cause for concern. Unfortunately for us Lisa Marie showed no signs of labor the night before this little fellow was born. We’ll never know exactly when the birth took place. We only know that the cria looked to be stillborn and had certainly been dead for several hours when we found it at 7:30 am that Sunday morning.
Lisa Marie left home yesterday to visit a friend’s farm for re-breeding. Hopefully her second pregnancy will produce a healthy cria for us!