Chai's Surprise Cria
Tuesday brought us a pleasant surprise. Ric had an appointment in the morning and checked on the girls before he left. I checked on the girls before I walked the dogs, checked on the girls again before I finished the chores in the boy’s pens and then went into the girl’s pens to turn on the fans before I let Blue out of the house for a potty break. I was thinking that after I had seen to Blue I could return to feed the girls.
Instead a surprise awaited me as I walked around the corner of the shelter, for there on the floor was a black male cria, cushed and almost dry! There were several girls in the shelter, but it only took a couple of seconds for me to see that Chai (her real name is AB IYIYI but we always call her Chai) was the mother of the cria.
Chai was just two days prior to her due date so for her to deliver a cria was not really a surprise. What was surprising was that she had not shown us any signs of being in labor. No sitting around, no frequent visits to the poop pile, no getting up and down to strain. Chai had simply delivered her cria very quickly and apparently with minimal effort. The cria look strong and healthy and Chai was looking surprising undisturbed by her recent delivery!
The other part of the surprise is that the cria is black, as the cria’s sire is our Enchantment’s Prince Regent who is white. While Regent has thrown a black cria out of a black dam in the past, we had thought that we would get a cria who was fawn or lighter from his pairing with Chai. That’s the fun of alpaca color genetics, you never really know what you are going to get!
Chai’s cria is a handsome boy, tall like his dam with tightly curled shiny fleece. At the moment he looks to be more of a bay black than a true black, but Chai’s previous cria Kaneka started off being a bay black and was true black by the time she was six months old. This little boy is darker than Kaneka was so I feel he too may well be more true black as he matures.
It’s always nice to have pleasant surprises and when you find a healthy, good looking cria waiting for you along with a dam who has had an easy delivery it makes for a really good start to the day. Within a short while Chai’s cria was up and about checking out his legs and then nursing from his dam – while Queen’s cria sat outside the pen where we had put Chai and her cria anxiously awaiting the time when he could play with the new arrival!
A Taste of Life at Windrush Alpacas 