Posts Tagged ‘llama births’
I thought eleven and a half months was a long time to wait for anything, but that was approximately how long Posey would be pregnant. Since we didn’t know the date of the effective breeding, the waiting period could be over a year from that first Mothers’ Day attempt. Lil Bit hadn’t gotten pregnant yet. […]
Late in April Kelly saw Posey’s belly heaving. “The baby must be dancing in there,” he reported to me. Sometimes I crawled around in Posey’s pasture, trying to see her teats. Posey looked at me, turning so she could watch what I was doing. That made it impossible for me to see her teats. Even […]
The baby was dangling half-way out of Posey’s rear. I suddenly understood the expression llama breeders use for birth, “hitting the ground.” Most llama births occurred with the mother standing, and the baby would indeed hit the ground. But Posey sat down–on the baby’s neck. Kelly moved the long neck out from under Posey’s back […]
Posey was lying on her side, twitching one of her rear legs. I’d seen that motion, though less pronounced, the day before as well. She still had several days until her second baby was due, and I wondered if the baby was moving into position. When I glanced out a few minutes later, it looked […]
We tried again to put the little guy under Posey. She thrashed around with displeasure at being handled, making it impossible for the baby to get to her. So we walked her up to our llama chute, where she couldn’t mill around so much. Once there, Posey did stop thrashing around. She sat down. When […]
Some breeders had experienced behavior problems from young male llamas who were bottle-fed or otherwise handled a lot as youngsters. It seemed that if these llamas bonded with people, they could come to think that people should be treated the same way as llamas. Normal intact male llamas threaten and attack each other in the […]
“It’s another boy. Another beautiful, darling, doggoned boy.” Juliet had been awkwardly sitting down and then standing back up all morning. It was springtime, but springtime in the mountains wasn’t just wildflowers and zephyr breezes. Springtime at Juniper Ridge also meant muddy fields and drizzling rain mixed with snow.Kelly moved Juliet into the part of […]
Lil Bit had a girl. Black and brown, not a speck of white, just like Shadow. And just like him, she didn’t start nursing right away. We left the mother and baby alone for hours. Then, as our anxiety about depriving the baby of colostrum increased, I had a go at milking out Lil. She […]