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Monday 13 July 2009

Another baby!

What a day ! It never ends , on returning from the school run I found that Riva , my suri, had given birth . The builders were all sitting on the new roof watching , and clearly found it all fascinating !

The new arrival is a beautiful colour darkish fawn and sooo gorgeous , with the most fantastic lock structure and lustre to die for. My only regret is that he is not a girl - that would have been amazing ! Also we have an issue for the future , his mother is a suri so he has the appearance of a suri due to the dominant phenotype , but his father is a huacaya .

This means that in the future , if he were to breed, matings to homozygous ( pure) suris would result in phenotypically suris , whilst mating to a heterozygous suri or a huacaya could produce a huacaya . Worse things have happened , but it does mean careful thought when the time comes .Meanwhile , Riva is the devoted mother and the cria was up and away very nicely , feeding well and weighing a healthy 9.1kgs. I dashed over to the vets to collect a dose of oxytocin, to help milk production , since last year she wasn't able to produce enough to feed her cria which meant I was bottle feeding for 6 months .

I have had a quick feel , and only 2 quarters have milk at the moment , fingers crossed that we don't have the same problem again . If she can't feed this one , then I will have to think about her place as a breeding female - she produces lovely cria , but am I committed to always feeding them for her ??

Plus I have fitted in hospital visits , my friend is doing OK and had an operation this afternoon to pin the fractured hip and seems to be recovering well from the op , I shall see tomorrow !

2 comments:

Debbie, Barnacre Alpacas said...

He looks lovely.

I too have a girl who doesn't produce enough milk to feed her babies. She is supposed to be 354 days at the minute but I'm beginning to wonder if she is pregnant. She doesn't look it but was scanned pregnant last year and is still spitting off - time will tell I suppose!

Claire MW said...

What a precious little one he is - such a sweet face and I just love his colouring. How wonderful!