A Brighter Day !!!!!!

This is the closest she has been.... with her mum

Feeling her feet.....

Great to see, after her reluctant start .....

If you didn't know the problems we've had you would never have guessed !!

I have pondered about this blog, but here goes...I don't want to temp fate !

Today has been a much brighter day, with our little new arrival. I was up bright and early to feed the baby, I went down to the shed with my various items !...bottle with 75ml of goats milk, towel and halter and lead rope !

The plan is as follows, I have to tie Minstrel up as she really protests when you go any where near the baby !....squeals, spits and generally is not a happy girl, she will not let you assist the baby feeding at all until she is tied up. So I have to tie her, just to stop her getting too upset, I then place a towel over her head to shield her eyes, mainly so she can't see me handle the baby. Once I have done this she will stand quietly, this then allows me to assist the baby in the feeding department !..this morning we did this, I gave the little one the bottle with the goats milk in, she soon made history of that, she was managing to suck much better than the previous day. I think that part of the problem is that she was not getting the hang of the angle she needed to be in to reach the udder. I have feed her with the bottle in a specific angle to try and mimic the angle she needed to be, as she was doing so well I decided to position her onto her mum, and she managed to find the 'knack' after a little while. I watched her feed for a few minutes, I was chuffed to bits !... Minstrel stood quietly and was a good girl whilst the little one had a feed.

After my success, I was really pleased with the progress. I thought that I would have a quick shower and go back at dinner time, to repeat the process. I was nice and clean, for a brief moment. At dinner time I went back to do the same process. I hadn't even managed to get over the gate and I was meet by the biggest, greenest and stinkiest splattering.......from Minstrel !!!.....at close range, I had a face full of chunky spit and had to scrape it off and go and get the towel !!!.....at the time I did thank her for her gratitude !!....smelling not so sweet, I decided to persevere.......I'll have you know I don't give up that easily ...... we did the same process and .............hey presto ......... baby feeding...... fantastic ....... I was so pleased... I had forgiven Minstrel already !!......well its an alpaca thing isn't it..... I didn't take it personally at all.

I had decided that if we managed to have a good feed that I would let them out in the field. As the weather was improving, as we have had rain and it has been very damp and misty up here.. I was reluctant to let them into the field, just in case I had any emergencies.... incidentally I had a chat with Debbie of Barnacre Alpacas this morning, apparently a lady called Lorraine rang Debbie, asking for me, she had similar problems last year with some of her cria...and to cut a long story short was recommending that I turn them out of the building... thank-you for your concern, its always nice to get advice or help from other concerned alpaca owners....if I didn't blog then this couldn't happen.

I let the girls and the new babies out into the field, well I thought that a couple of hours out would do them good and it would be nice to see if the baby took more notice of her mother in the field.... and guess what she did.....she ran out after her mother......she was tearing about it was amazing..... she even showed much more interest in Minstrel....I thought that this would improve the bonding and it definitely has..... I watched them for ages !... they were out about 4 hours and I sat on the seat in the garden to keep an eye on them. I must admit that I was really relieved just to see her interacting with her mother.

I was not expecting the next thing, but it happened, after about 2 hours....I was sitting watching them all and guess what...yes... the baby was with her mother, she nuzzled under her belly and began to feed all by her self............how fantastic was that.... brilliant

I shall keep an eye on her, but I will not interfere if she can do it naturally.. after all, maybe she just needed a little help to point her in the right direction. Nature is a marvellous thing.

So we are a little more happier tonight. I shall pop down later tonight, just to check things are ok.