Next bottle due in 32 minutes!

22/07/2009 by Rosemary.

Thank you Sam for holding the fort (and kicking me in the head in the night, and leaving your disgusting socks under my pillow but at least you don’t snore like your father - it’s not easy for three in a two berth caravan!).  It is odd but the Blog gets really important in times of crisis!  It is nice to know people are interested in our animals and we love getting the comments.  Sam now thinks he should write an entry once a week and I agree!

Back to Bert’s baby, no name yet as I am a bit scared to start naming it yet!  She had it when we were not in the field and the rain was hammering down.  It was between 1 and 2 hours old - maybe a little more and it was wringing wet and caked in mud.  Bert and her were both shivering like leaves.  We got them in the barn and dried the cria as much as we could but the mud made it very difficult.  Bert was very protective and bit Carl’s ear at one point.  It was a very pathetic sight as the cria was desperate to drink and Bert was trying so hard to get it to feed from her but there was nothing.  We defrosted some colostrum but it was very difficult to get it down her.  This was not helped by me forgetting to snip the end of the teat!  In the end we used some powdered colostrum made up very thick and shot it down her throat in a syringe.  That perked her up a bit and she then had some from the bottle but she kept trying to get it from her Mum.  We kept going with a bottle every two hours all night, we had to pen all the animals in the barn with a separate little bit for Bert and the cria but Caroline lay right across the entrance gate and would not move so Carl and I had to keep climbing over pallets we had used to make the pen to get to her and that was an art in itself.  If only I had a proper barn!  The cria shivered all night despite the coat - oh for a heat lamp!  The rain drove in at the sides and it was still hammering down in the morning.  By 5am we were getting a bit fatalistic then she suddenly went for the bottle - that was Carl’s doing.  WELL DONE CARL!  He is very proud of himself, like a new Dad.  I expect him to slope off to the pub for a cigar and a pint, “Just to wet the babies head”!

We then went on to lamb milk replacer but by now all the girls were getting restless and wanted to go back to the field.  Horrible weather though and I didn’t want the cria getting wet again.  Bert went frantic every time they looked like they were about to go out of sight.  The first break in the rain this morning I let them all out into the field and they all charged about for a few minutes with Bert chasing after her cria.  This morning feeding was still painfully slow.  We cleaned up the barn and a bit of grass outside and prayed for the sun.

Our prayers were answered!  The sun came out!  The cria isn’t easy to feed and does not take much at a time but she is following the others around and sticking close to her mother.  We took her coat off but that was a real performance!  Bert screeched at me as if I was killing it.  I read another breeder saying the same thing had happened with her - maybe Bert thought I was taking her skin off!

Bert is so proud of her cria and looks better than she has done for ages.

I still can’t work out what colour the cria is - she looked a bit grey at first but I think that was just the mud.  She might be a sort of fawn but it is nothing like Yoda.  We’ll have to wait and see.  Anyway, back to another evening and night in the caravan but I am going to get a bath in somewhere!  Carl’s favourite saying at the moment seems to be, “Well, we must still look after ourselves “  Which appears to mean he wants feeding and I have forgotten him in my rush to organise cria feeding!  So, finally, Bert’s baby!!

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