Jj is for Jottings 23. Geisha’s First Cria (Baby).
We bought Geisha for her good breeding, her fawn colouring and her very appealing fluffy teddy bear ears. We were going to breed from her and, hopefully, produce lots of cria (a cria is a baby alpaca) with teddy bear ears just like their mum. Unfortunately it turned out that her temperament does not match her appearance, and she is very flighty, barges about at feeding time and disrupts everybody else as she tries to steal their food (despite the fact that I serve her first in a vain attempt to get her to leave the others alone), and is really downright unpleasant to all and sundry. She won’t tolerate any attempts on our part to touch her, except when she’s forced to for shearing and toenail cutting. On the other hand, she is a very good herd protector, being the most vigilant of all the alpacas.
We had been told that if an alpaca has her cria after midday there are often problems. Geisha must have been listening to that conversation, for her first cria was a little huddled heap on the ground beside her, obviously having been born during the night. Thankfully she had managed the birth without intervention, but that little scrap would die if we didn’t get him up, warm and feeding. He couldn’t stand on his feet because his “ankles” collapsed (it’s called “knuckling”), so he couldn’t feed. Not only did his ankles collapse, but we’d often find him with his head lolling right back – no muscle control in that long neck. We put a coat on him and decided that there was nothing for it but to milk Geisha and feed him from a bottle – wild Geisha who plunges about at the drop of a hat. Help! However (may Heaven rain down countless blessings upon maternal instinct), Geisha stood like a rock to be milked. Luckily she was so good that one of us was able to manage to milk her without needing the other to hold her, which was just as well since we both had work commitments. We got the little one feeding from a bottle, and called him Pico. It was too cold at night to leave him out with Geisha, so we put him inside by the fire at night and returned him to Geisha by day (with his coat on, of course.) Geisha was not happy about us taking him away at night, but she had no choice.
After several days of milking Geisha, bottle-feeding Pico and trying to get him standing properly, he was finally strong enough to stand and learn to drink from his mum. Hooray! He turned into a strong and sturdy fellow – you can see him fighting with Quiros in the book – but he always remained somewhat vertically challenged.