Beginning to see the light

.. at the end of the tunnel I hope ! Diablo , as he will be called, is making progress thank God. Monday night was stressful , with a couple of night feeds from me , so I was tired by the morning . Luckily Tuesday was glorious , and so the little chap went out to meet some of the herd , red cria coat and all. Everybody was very excited to meet the new cria and there was alot of running around and of course lots of sniffing . Veronica was torn , on the one hand she wanted to get at the grass and on the other she really didn't like the others getting too close to her baby . In the end a compromise was reached by putting her in a small filed next to the rest of the herd . Diablo took it all well , initially he couldn't get up by himself , but once up could stand for a short while before folding himself back into a perfect little cush. Despite being over due by forever , he is tiny at just 5.8 kg , by far the smallest cria we have had.

Today he is able to stand and walk about by himself and he has spent a large portion of the day outside. The yearlings are very excited and there has been a lot of skittishness , Diablo is keen to join in but the flesh is not quite up to it! I am still milking mum about every hour and then giving it to her cria , his sucking reflex is a bit weak , thou' it seems to be getting better , and he is having trouble keeping his tongue under control , but that too is getting better. He is keen to feed from mum , but with a slightly out of control tongue and still wobbly legs he has not managed to perfect latching on , he knows where to go and is very keen so I am hopeful that within a couple of days it will all come right , meantime I am milking mum and supplementing with goats milk from a bottle . Still fingers crossed!