Big Belly Blues

I’m on cria watch for one of my favorite alpaca Peruvia (Ruvi for short). Cria watch is what we do when we are in the window for an alpaca birth. We start about a month before the cria is due. We go out and check the barn every hour during the morning and every two hours in the afternoon. We check once or twice in the night. We don’t all go anywhere unless its a lighting strike with a quick return. Mostly alpacas don’t need help but if they do you risk loosing the baby and the mom if you are not around. We have had over 40 births and we have never been off farm when one happened. Now sometimes we have missed seeing the birth but not by much. Our non-alpaca farming friends think we are nuts but heck when you have a lovely farm why do you want to leave it anyway?
I love all our alpacas but some have very special places in my heart and one of those is Ruvi. We bought Ruvi when she was a tiny tot. I don’t think she was 2 months old when we bought her. She was a cria at the side of her glorious mother Elsa. We bought them both sight unseen from Destiny Alpacas. I’m not sure why, there was something about Elsa I just liked. She is tall and regal. She has a neato face. Honestly her face looks just like Chewbaca the Wookie’s from Starwars. She has a hint of a mask around her eyes and wookie-esque nose. Her fiber is dreamy. She is a crimpy fine medium/dark fawn, the color of a perfectly toasted bagel still nice even at her rather advanced age. Elsa has one fault she is now sixteen years old. That is pretty darn old for a still reproducing alpaca dam. Elsa is a world traveling alpaca she was born in Huarapina Peru on a ranch in the rural Alianza cooperative. She was imported through the Alpaca Registry in the United State and exported to a ranch in Australia. She was eventually exported again to a farm in Canada and then on to Destiny Alpacas in Georgia and finally to us. She is not going anywhere else. I don’t know how many cria she had in Australia but she has 9 registered cria in the US registry. Five of her cria are champions. Five!! You might be able to tell but Elsa is also one of my favorites too, mostly because she is gentle and kind. Now back to Ruvi, unlike her mother she was a spitfire from her difficult get-go.
She had been a dystocia (stuck baby) and her one leg got bent during the desperate stuggle to get her born alive down at Destiny. By the time Ruvi came to us she still had just a hint of trouble with that leg it turned out a bit when she walked. Big deal I thought we just won’t show her. Ruvi had everything I like to see in an alpaca she was proud and haughty she strutted around like all of us, human and alpaca alike, were beneath her. Every once in a while she would pronk straight up in the air and dance around, and play with the other babies (especially Tam). Then she seemed to look around to see if anyone noticed this lapse in dignity. She had wild glorious fiber, it hung all over in snakey crimpy tendrils. I’d never seen any fiber like it. She grew into a small alpaca compared to her mom but with a broad deep frame witht hick tree trunk legs. My Dad would have said she was built like a brick sh*t-house sorry that’s what he would have said, crude but accurate). She’s fiery in temperament but she loves to have her chin scratched and she does like to be petted. You can do just about anything with her. Her leg seemed okay so we took her to her first show, she was so tiny that Andy could have carried her into the ring in his pocket. She went in a giant class of 15 and although the judge kept coming back to look at her she got the gate and didn’t place. Maybe it was her tiny size, her leg, her unusual fiber who knows? We waited until she had a nice growth spurt, leg looked great and tried again at the Maryland Alpaca Show the next spring. She took first in her class and champion in her color! We entered her in several more shows but after Maryland we noticed she got a mite infection in her back feet (just a little read cracked skin between her toes). It took forever to heal. She missed every other show that spring. I was so disappointed after she had done so well at Maryland. She also missed getting shorn so Andy drove her over to our shearer’s. Andy took her and when he got back I asked, “How did it go?”
“Oh fine.” He said (long pause). “Well there was one thing.”
“What?” I asked becoming alarmed that she got nicked or something.
Long pause again, Andy, “Scott found a dead hummingbird in her fleece.”
Me thinking that Scott and Andy were fooling around, “What! @#!!#$!! What? You are kidding! Where?!”
Andy, “On her neck!”
Now I have heard all kinds of stories about what folks find in fleece usually bags of fleece, a friend who ran a mill had a display on all the stuff she pulled out of fleece (my personal favorite was a kid’s action figure.) You don’t hear so many stories about what you find in fleece actually still attached to the alpaca. Some poor little hummingbird got all tangled in her long neck fleece and expired. Scott later threatened to report us to the Audobon society and happily shared the bird story with everyone. File it under strangest thing found when shearing an alpaca.
Ruvi was all better and went to the prestigious Empire Extravaganza that fall and took blue in her class. Another farm wanted to buy her but I found I just couldn’t part with her and Andy felt the same way. When she got home from the show we bred her to our stud Magneeto. Her pregnancy was uneventful until the next fall she got a respiratory infection (the infamous “Snots”) which perhaps triggered an early birth. I was home alone when she went into labor. Andy was at work in class, Dr Wendy our faithful vet was away at a conference due back that night. My friend and fellow alpaca farmer Ann B was out walking her dogs. We had a big problem, Ruvi and I, Ruvi had a stuck baby herself.
All that was peaking out was a little gasping squeaking mouth and nose and there it stopped and no more progress. I went into the house and called Dr Wendy in the desperate hope she maybe took an earlier flight but of course she had not. I tend to swear when stressed and left a profanity ridden plea on Ann B’s machine but she was out and 20 minutes away if she had been right at her phone. The neighbors were away too. I thought how can I do this with no one holding her but here is the strangest thing, Ruvi just laid there and let me go in and correct the baby’s position. I got my ob sleaves on and lubed up and worked my hands in, I found both front legs bent hung up at the elbows. I straightened them and but this point Ruvi was too tired so I wiggled the baby out. Oh my gosh it looked like a mini-Ruvi, same color same snakey crimpy fleece and a girl to boot. We named her Quenti which is Quechua for Hummingbird. Quenti is more like Elsa in personality laid back and kind, not a little fireball like mama. Ruvi took to motherhood like a duck to water. She was fascinated with Quenti and would not let her out of her sight for days. Quenti went running and playing with Ruvi chasing her and trying to keep her safe. When it was time, we re-bred Ruvi to her childhood sweetheart rose gray Tamerlane. Tam is also one of my favorite alpacas. I look forward to every single baby alpaca birth I just can not wait for this baby. It will be Tam’s first and I’m hoping to will be his color which is a heathered pink (really really).
Here is the thing Ruvi’s belly is huge huge huge. It was never this huge with Quenti. Every single farm visitor has asked, “When is she due?” They started doing this is May but she is due September 25th. Then they ask if I’m sure, then they ask if I’m really really sure. Sure I’m sure Quenti was born September 17th she didn’t get pregnant when she was pregnant with Quenti. Even Dr Wendy asks me when she is due. Sigh! She’s due September 25th, September 25th!
Her belly is huge huge huge. When she rolls in the dusty dust bath spot she gets stranded and can’t get up. She looks like a big fuzzy (dusty) turtle over on her shell. She is last out of the barn and last in. She waddles, when she walks and one day she tried to run in a herd frolic and she and her belly were going different scary directions. I had to sit down, I thought she was going to explode. She lays with her legs cocked to the side. She’s bagged up but no signs under the tail that things are close. I can’t concentrate, I’ve got a million things to do but mostly I hang out at the barn watching her. I keep saying I just want a healthy baby and that is of course a lie, I always want a healthy baby but what I really want is a baby with her fiber in Tam’s color! Snakey crimpy pink tendrils of divine fiber to play with! But I’m tense and anxious, I dream of twins, sometimes they are okay sometimes they are not. Last night I dreamt she had twin black girls each the size of my foot. Perfect little miniatures! Alpaca rarely twin successfully and that is my deep fear that the reason she is so big is twins. They talk about the wonderful alpaca lifestyle (and it is wonderful) but sometimes its not too relaxing. Back to stare at that huge belly. More when she births!


here is her link if you want to see what she looks like:

http://www.alpacanation.com/alpacasforsale/03_viewalpaca.asp?name=33613