A New Life Begins

This was just going to be a day for friends and family to come for a holiday BBQ.  The day started as usual until Jim came up from doing chores and said; "I think we're going to have a baby today".

We bred one of our maidens last year and sure enough she was in labor.

The alpaca in labor (Princess) is the one laying down and the one standing is her mother (Treasure).  Treasure stayed pretty close during the labor. 

We thought everything was progressing nicely when the nose started to appear.  This was also the time when our guests started arriving.  We were going to eat at about 1:00 but that sure didn't happen.

Poor Princess, she was up and then she was down.  In this picture, she is looking towards me as if asking for help.

Of course every minute seemed like an hour as we tried not to jump in and take over but after a certain amount of time passed we had no choice.

This is the first birth in 8 years that we had to help with and we hope we go another 8 without it happening again.


                                                                    
My husband ,Jim, had to slip in one hand to get the head and legs in the proper postion.  Once this happened we felt pretty sure every thing would be all right.  But again, Princess would get up and then lay back down.  
                                                                             


At this point, I called the vet. 

Baby was breathing fine but by now Princess would not even get up.  It seemed she just didn't know what to do and was exhausted.

 What seemed like hours later, but was really only about 20 minutes, the vet arrived.

Princess got up as soon as he showed up.  He always wears these green coveralls and I swear the animals know who he is. 

I was shocked when he pulled that chain out of the bucket of soapy water.  I thought what in the world was he going to do with that?    Jim said they sometime wrap the chain around the legs to help pull the baby out.   Luckily he didn't use it, just held it in his hands.

 

And then he was out........what a wonderful site to see!  A live, moving baby.

We love our vet.  Look at that smile on his face.  

Here he is all snuggled in the barn.  What a cutey!  Not one spot of white on that little body.

Now to come up with a name........