s e v e n i s a j o u r n e y

We have another live and healthy cria on the ground- and another girl no less!

Last night around 8PM Sarah knocked on the door- seems Yvonne had noticed that Galdriel was acting mighty suspicious while she and the girls were riding out back. We went and checked- yep, stage 1 labor. Now this is generally considered “very not good”, any labor after 4 or 5 PM is, by the book, an “emergency- call the vet” situation. We brought all the girls down to the yards about 9 PM, and commenced our watch.

About 10 PM we called for advice to Jeanette (head of the health comittee), Linda (who taught the neonatal course) and our Vet. The advice was (1) wait and watch (2) stick hand in and see what is going on, and (2) another vote for stick hand in. We watched until about 10:45, then stuck Tam stuck her (clean, gloved, lubricated) hand in- and felt a little nose at the far end of the birth canal!

We laid out a sleeping bag in the yards, and lay down to wait. 20 minutes later we heard a little *gak gak* noise, and the flashlight revealed a little head. The noise was from the cria coughing to clear her lungs of amniotic fluid. About 3 minutes later the cria was on the groud. Galadriel does have quick easy births once the process gets going.

Black. Female. About 9 kg. She was on her feet and getting about within 30 minutes.

Now the challenge was trying to get a feed into her. The earlier the colostrum goes in, the better. In nature the cria “looks for the dark spot”, going under mum and eventaully finding the teat. At midnight this involved a flashlight trained on Galdriel’s back, and that worked. It took some time, but about 12:30 she finally found the milk bar, and got a good drink. We then slept awhile. About 1:30 AM Tam got up and using the flashlight got another feed into the baby. By 3 AM the placenta had passed. Tam went inside, I spent the rest of the night in the yards.

Now we need to look up “owl” in arabic and see if that would make a good name, as the Moreporks (native owls) were calling all around us throughout the night.

I tried to weigh her again this morning but she was far to wriggly to weigh with a spring scale. She and Galadriel ran up the laneway, and are now happily wandering around gallop.

9AM edit- checking her out in fully light reveals slightly floppy ears. This is a classic sign of a slightly dysmature cria. So even though she went 4.5 weeks overdue, the cria was not quite done! This is one reason why you should not induce labor, even if the mother is past her due date, as the cria may not be nearly as developed as the time would suggest. Slightly floppy ears are not really a worry, we will just monitor her closely over the next few days. Nice warm and sunny weather will no doubt help.