Chapter Thirteen:
Girls!
[Page 3]
About a week later, Kelly had to go to California briefly. We didn't
think Juliet was due for another ten days, but she gave birth while
I was home alone. Another normal birth--perhaps a little slow for
my impatient tastes--and another girl, Blossom's full sister.
Our pastures were full of females, eight of them. With three little
ones, the evening run was busy. The babies' antics would stimulate
the yearlings, Blossom and Pocahontas, to run around with them.
Sometimes Lil or Posey would kick up her heels for a moment as well.
We called it the Indianapolis Five Hundred.
We had been breeding our ladies, but we weren't sure who had gotten
pregnant yet. It was still too soon to do blood testing. I heard
of a strategy for testing pregnancy: you take your stud, on lead,
for a stroll through the females' pasture. The ladies' responses
to him are likely to tell you a lot. We had used a variation of
this technique, where we would have a male and female meet across
the fence; it was usually reliable.
So we haltered Levi and took him in with the females. All five
youngsters came running over. As he greeted his three daughters
and the other two girls, he curled his tail around submissively,
a typical adult male response to babies.
I took him toward the adult females. Lil spat at him several times.
"Great, maybe she's pregnant,'' Kelly said.
Levi and I were near Posey's rear end. He sniffed it. She ran away.
Levi went after her, and I kept up with him, still holding his lead
rope. We ran up hill and down. Levi started trying to mount Posey.
Abruptly, she sat down. Levi sat on top of her, and began orgling.
Soon he was breeding her.
The young llamas had been running along behind, and now they stood
by the breeding pair. Levi, as usual when breeding, seemed oblivious
to everything going on around him. Posey sniffed me in a mildly
curious way when I happened to stand in front of her. Everyone but
Juliet was gathered around. I patted little Renaissance. Renny was
about a month old now, and not easy to catch. But she too seemed
lulled by the event, and allowed me to stroke her.
Kelly and I were visualizing another lovely daughter. We practiced
visualization in many aspects of our lives. We did it faithfully
with all the llama breedings, imagining that a healthy female baby
would be the result.
Was it just coincidence that our pastures were full of healthy
females? I thought of a quote I'd read somewhere: "When I pray,
coincidences happen. When I don't, they don't.'' We intended to
give coincidences every possible opportunity, so we pictured Posey
having a lovely Levi daughter the following year. This was the first
time we had bred her to him.
Lil was trying to bite Posey's ear. Then she nibbled on Levi's
front foot. We shoved her away, but she sat down right next to Posey.
Blossom tried to mount her father, and Kelly pulled her off. Lil
got up and went back to nibbling on the breeding llamas. Lally stood
on her father's back feet, but he didn't notice a thing.
I haltered Lil, thinking I'd put her out of the way in the barn.
She resisted me every step; after a few yards, she sat down and
wouldn't budge. I just left her there. "Maybe she's not pregnant,
after all,'' I said to Kelly.
With Lil Bit sitting on the sidelines, the last few minutes of
the breeding were quieter. Blossom investigated Levi's face. Juliet
wandered out from the barn and sniffed his rear. Eventually he got
up. We wouldn't know it until the next summer, but Levi and Posey
had just started a daughter.
|
