This is Saturn who is now really starting to behave like a pregnant animal. As well as looking somewhat on the rotund side (difficult to tell from this photo), she is now lying down a lot more and has become far more wary and nervous around us! We are not feeding the alpacas on a daily basis now – there is more than enough grass – but today we went down with a small jugfull just to check Saturn was still happy to hand feed. She was but there was still a wariness about her and she only took a few mouthfuls before heading back to her ‘laying down’ patch!! We have been told that alpacas usually give birth at first light and so all being well, we hope to simply find our first cria when we go down for our morning check. We don’t have an exact due date for Saturn, other than early June but we are now getting pretty close!
The time of birth is attributed to the fact that the alpaca is a ‘prey’ animal and as such needs to give the newborn cria time to recover from being born, take its first few drinks and find its feet, in order to be better able to 'escape' if the need arises. They also need to move with the rest of the herd and find a new resting place before night falls. Alongside this is the fact that alpacas don’t eat their afterbirth – unlike other livestock – therefore it is crucial to get the new cria up, mobile and then away before the afterbirth attracts predators. In a domestic situation such as we have here, it is up to the ‘humans’ to remove the afterbirth. In the UK, we may not have the wolves/wild dogs of South America, but we do have foxes!!!
We are not at all sure that Venus is pregnant: she does not look as large as her mum and she is still behaving as she always has done. Having not really planned to have pregnant alpacas at all, we will now actually be rather sad if we only get one cria as we were looking forward to seeing them play together!!! Time will, as ever, tell!!!