Sunday, November 1, 2009

Our first cria: here and gone


Saturday morning I was dressed up and ready to leave for my nephew's birthday party when Jonathan walked in and said that he had found what looked like half of a dead baby llama. What? How? We only have one female llama, and she shouldn't be having a cria until next April, since llamas have an 11-month pregnancy. We bought her in May, and she was not supposed to be bred. I pulled on my farm boots and coat, hoping I had completely covered my clean clothes.

Everyone ran outside and through the barn and to the far pasture where we saw Sovalye, the livestock guardian dog, standing over something in the grass. We smelled the cria about the same time we saw it. Clearly it had been dead for quite some time. It smelled like rotten meat, and Sovalye was very interested in it. We had no idea whether it was a boy or a girl, because the back half of it was completely missing. We knew Sovalye was not to blame, because he had not been in that pasture for weeks. It was hard for us to believe the llamas would have let coyotes in the pasture to eat their young one, even if it was dead.

Only one thing now made sense to me -- now I understood why Katy looked thin when I was in the pasture a week and a half earlier. Two Wednesdays ago, I was taking pictures of all the animals with the fall foliage. When I saw Katy, I thought she looked thin, but when I compared her to the other llamas, I couldn't say why. When I downloaded the pictures to the computer, I had to say that she looked like a perfectly normal llama. Now I realize that she must have recently given birth, which was why she looked "thin" to me.

I contacted the breeder we bought her from, and she said that another llama had unexpectedly given birth two weeks earlier. She concluded that one of the boys in their mama-baby pasture had reached sexual maturity a little early and got the two pregnant. Luckily their baby survived. We will probably never know why ours died. Perhaps the mama gave birth in the rain, and the baby died from hypothermia. That's about the only thing that makes sense to me. Considering how many other animals the llamas have saved from coyote attacks, I have to believe that they would have protected their own young one.

8 comments:

Juliann said...

Deb I'm so sorry. How disappointing. Could she have aborted it early?

SkippyMom said...

Sorry for your loss Deb. That is so sad. You seem to be on the mark tho' that it died at birth [or as Juliann said she may have lost it] because of your suspicion that she wouldn't have let the coyotes near the baby.

Take care and perhaps next year? :)

Deborah Niemann said...

No, it was a full-term cria, fully developed.

CONEFLOWER said...

Oh, Deborah. That is so sad. Sad for the mama and sad for you and sad for the baby. If only you had known, you could have had the momma up close where you could watch her. Geee, just not fair.

Anonymous said...

That is sad, but you didn't know and you certainly couldn't have expected it, since she wasn't supposed to be bred.

Nancy in Iowa

Gizmo said...

Was Katy a maiden? When you're talking about crias, remember fully developed doesn't necessarily mean full term. We lost a fully developed, EARLY female cria a month ago.
If Katy wasn't paying attention to it when you were out there, then she had already "moved on". Coyotes probably got it after that time.
So sorry for your loss! I hope you can get her re-bred in the Spring.

MaskedMan said...

Condolances. Very sad, even though you didn't know.

Deborah Niemann said...

Katy has had a baby before, and if this one wasn't full term, it was very close. It had wavy black hair, and its neck was at least a foot long. The front legs were even longer. She's only been here since May, and this was definitely not something that could have developed in only five months. If you're saying that maybe it died because it was born a little early, that's possible. Since no one knows when she was bred, it's impossible to know if it was premature.

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