So, the nasty weather arrived about 8-12 hours later than predicted, and yesterday morning the fun began. Gale force southerly winds and sleeting rain. (Thankfully the rain was never that intense, but our weather station was recording 100kph gusts.) I was glad to have the shed to put Angela’s girls (including the day-old cria) in. You don’t want a new baby outside on a day like that!

So, at 10 AM I went to check on them- only to find head-and-legs sticking out of Cadence! What a day to have a cria! After 25 minutes of watching there had been no progress, and I had no idea how long she had been head-and-legs out (last check had been 2 hours previous), time to lend a hand! With a bit of gentle pulling whenever she had a contraction, we got the baby out over the next 5 minutes- a beautiful little black Suri girl! Needless to say Angela was very excited when I told her.

So the baby got toweled off and had a warm cover put on her. Later in the day, when she was no quick to stand, I decided to bottle feed her some colostrum to make sure she had the energy to get going. All seems to have gone well. She was up and about the morning, and mothers and cria were all happy to be released from their shed-prison back into the paddock. Watching day-old cria trying to figure out how “up” and “down” work on a hillside is comedy gold.