Nature's Math

Last time, I mentioned the way nature seems to have a balanced equation between deaths and births.  If you were keeping track, you may be questioning my math skills, since we lost a calf and a goat that Friday, and only gained a cria on Sunday.  That's not exactly balanced - but that's because the second cria didn't arrive until Tuesday morning :)  It's almost eerie how accurate nature's math is!  Some friends also recently lost an animal - a half-grown lamb (former bottle baby, just to make things worse), and within a few days had 2 new surprise lambs born.  Sometimes nature even takes into account the emotional investment you may have had in a particular case :)

Our new guy is Dolly's, her first cria, and she and he are both doing great.  Apparently alpacas almost never give birth outside daylight hours, virtually always between 6 am and 2 pm.  This little fellow was up and nursing by 6 - since it gets light just after 5:00 here, Dolly must have got going at the crack of dawn, literally!  She is being very attentive - we went out to ogle the little ones yesterday, and her cria trotted off after a goat kid that had been nose-sniffing with him, and Dolly panicked.  She was running in circles, crying, until she found him.  

This one is also just beautiful (of course!), a medium fawn all over.  Of all the colors, I think that's my favorite, and I now have 2.5 fawn alpacas (Annie is 1/2 white, 1/2 fawn).  These babies are so incredibly soft - it's like down, I can barely tell I'm touching them.  I can't wait for their first shearing, since they're June babies, we should get a nice 10-month fleece off them next spring.  The finest alpaca fleece grade is "baby", although it's only a designation of the diameter of the fibers, not necessarily that it actually came from a baby - but those fleeces will be "baby" in both senses!

When we bought them, we were told that Reba was possibly due in April, and if not, then in September with the other 3 girls.  I now have several questions for the former owners - mainly, depending on the actual breeding times, who is the father of theses guys?!  Is it our stud Toby, because Reba's earlier supposed breeding was with a different stud. And it looks like Dolly's was probably with the same guy as Reba - whoever that was!  Hmmm...

Regardless, they are a wonderful, incredibly adorable surprise, and I can't wait for the other two, some time this summer/fall!