Surprise Birth

We got home from Bethel late Sunday night. On Monday, I set about catching up on things around the house. I counted heads on everything. When I went out to feed the alpacas I noticed the odd behavior of Canela. She was at the other end of the pasture, away from the other girls. When I opened the barn to let the girls in to eat, no Canela! Now that isn't normal. She came in a few minutes late and was humming at me. She doesn't usually hum, either. She did eat her grain. I told my husband that she was in labor, in the afternoon. Alpacas usually deliver in the morning and afternoon babies usually mean trouble. I stayed out in the pasture for about another hour waiting for her to deliver and deliver she did. I had to break her water and when I did I saw a tail where the head should be! Oh no! A breech birth. Instantly, everything I ever read starting flooding my mind. Rips, vaginal tearing, stitches, c-sections, oh no! "Maybe its an ear", I thought. Then I saw a bump next to her vagina. The buttbone. Luckily for Canela I have small hands. I ran two fingers all the way around the outside of her vagina and put two fingers of each hand in and caught the joint where the leg and the hip meet and with each contraction I pulled. She was contracting every 20 seconds or so and it took three contractions to pull him out. I saw maybe a teaspoon of red blood. Then no more bleeding. Whew! That's good. Canela passed the afterbirth about an hour later with no problems. She is fine. He was a little wobbly the first day and I bottle fed him. I milked out Canela and fed it to him.

I'll keep you posted on his progress. What a day! These are pictures of him a couple of hours old.

Talk to you soon,  Tammy