Welcome, Baby Tanya!

Our newest arrival is here, a big welcome to little Tanya (continuing our classic country music artists, obviously named for Tanya Tucker). 

When I went out to milk this morning, I found Annie with her brand-new little girl - Annie still hadn't passed the placenta, so she was freshly born.  The alpacas have always, with the exception of Reba last year, had their babies first thing in the morning. Usually, Caleb would find them newly delivered at 6 am, but this year we moved the moms - just a few days ago - into the milking pen so they would be safer and accessible when they cria'd (or whatever the term is!).  I'd say Tanya was born at something like 8:30am.

One of the reasons for the move is that we have no reason to believe this year and baby will be any different from last year, and that Annie won't make quite enough milk.  We'll need to supplementally bottle feed Tanya, like we did her brother Kenny last summer, so she gains enough.  Luckily, Reba seems to make plenty of milk, so last year we weighed and charted both Kenny to track his weight gain or lack thereof, and Reba's daughter Loretta, as an example of what the growth chart should be.  Loretta grew by leaps and bounds, sometimes a pound a day average, so we know what the ideal rate of weight gain is and can compare what Tanya does and try to keep her up in healthy range.

In keeping with her last 2 babies, in fact all the cria she's had here with us, Annie's 3rd cria is again fully white with two blue eyes, so 90% chance deaf.  Since the last 2 were, we are just assuming Tanya is as well.  There are really no negatives associated with deaf babies, once Annie got used to it the first time, and figured out to stick close to the baby since it won't come when she calls.  In fact, it makes catching them when young (when they're always sleeping in the grass) much easier :)

The secondary reason for separating the mama alpacas, is that we also separated last year's cria as well.  Well, we tried to just move the 2 female yearlings, but when I went back out to milk after moving the moms and girls, there was Kenny waiting at the fence to get in with his mama.  He apparently followed us through the gate we didn't shut well enough, and snuck around the edge of the field so we didn't see him.  We included the girls because we want to make sure they don't get bred too early - they are similar to our cows, and mature somewhere between 2 and 3 years of age.  Since you can only find out if someone is precocious the hard way, we figured it is simpler to separate them now, and control the breeding of the mothers after they give birth, than to cross our fingers that the girls aren't fully mature yet.  Our only intact male is their father, so we really need to avoid them getting too friendly!  Our plan is to wait until Reba has her baby, then breed both her and Annie to Toby, and then get him and little Kenny fixed so it's not an issue.  Then we can run a mixed herd again, until the little girls are mature, and take them to a nearby farm for stud service from an unrelated alpaca.  If we find a good deal on another intact male we may take it, but we have access to breeding services and that may end up being simpler in the long run.  

I've put some pictures up in the alpaca photo gallery - until I figure out how to size down pictures on my phone, I really cant put them in the blog post or it wil bog down loading the page for everyone, and I'd hate to do that!  So go check them out, there's a couple of pretty cute ones with Malachi, and Fiona also.