(Part 3: "Yes, I am alive")
Georgina M Byrne
By the time she was a few days old, we noticed that there was a problem with Snowy's new baby. In our new-breeder enthusiasm we were weighing our llama babies daily, checking their progress against data we'd obtained from articles published in Llamas magazine. Our first cria Aria was born almost exactly a year earlier and also on a cold rainy day, but the weather had seemed to have no bearing on her progress. Her weight had increased steadily and she'd doubled her birth-weight of eleven kilos in just three weeks.
Balalaika's birth-weight was the same as Aria's, but a week later, in spite of her spending just as much time under the business end of her mother, Laika weighed only ten kilos. Constantly cold and wet, her flat silky fleece was quite unlike the thick, woolly coat which had kept baby Aria warm and dry. I'd read about suri alpaca and how few survived the first week of life on the altiplano, and here we were with a little suri-type llama in winter. Perhaps Snowy's last cria had had the same fleece-type and that's why he'd died?
My mother made Laika a raincoat, fashioned after the coats we used for our old dogs in the wintertime. It was a good fit, and we thought it looked rather glamorous. Snowy, however, was utterly outraged and refused to have anything to do with the brightly-coloured little stranger. The milk-bar was suddenly and emphatically off-limits. Reluctantly, we stripped the hapless baby of her protective covering and exposed her once more to the cold and rain.
It occurred to us, that Snowy's milk supply might have been inadequate. Some sort of supplementation seemed called for. What to use and how much to give were two of the decisions to be made. The third and perhaps the most difficult problem to solve was how to deliver milk to the offspring of an animal whose mistrust of humans was complete and absolute. Snowy might have been lacking in the milk department but she was just as determined as old Brighteyes had been to keep her daughter out of our way. Just catching Laika in the nightime enclosure for her daily weighing, was difficult enough and in the beginning at least, would bring on a bout of furious spitting. My raincoat and felt hat became useful for protecting me from more than rain! After that sort of drama, the last thing Laika wanted was to do was suck on a bottle. Every feed of goat's milk, given four times a day, took ten minutes of struggle and much wastage of expensive and more importantly, hard to obtain fluid. Four bottles meant four pursuits and captures of an increasingly nimble and totally ungrateful cria.
We moved mother and baby to the orchard, which was a great deal smaller than the bottom paddock and although there was no undercover area, it contained a yard into which the pair could be driven. Slowly Laika gained weight and Snowy became accustomed to the routine of capture and the enforced feeding of her daughter. The spitting ceased, though the baby still seemed determined to starve rather than seek the life-saving fluid being forced upon her. We changed the food to Divetelact. It was still expensive, but at least it could be readily obtained, in bulk and in powdered form. By three weeks of age, with five 250ml supplementary feeds being given, Laika had gained a mere one and a half kilos on her birthweight. She condescended to suck, albeit slowly and with little enthusiasm, for both Michael and me. By three and a half weeks she weighed thirteen kilos. Aria, at that age had weighed twenty two.
A year earlier, Michael and I had signed contracts to judge dog shows together in South Australia (under different circumstances, it would have been a nice little holiday for us), so we arranged for our daughter Theresa to come to the farm during the day to give Laika her bottles. Matthew, who still lived at home, was to give the morning and evening feeds. Laika, however, clenched her jaws, spurning these unfamiliar carers and wasting even more formula. By the time we returned four days later she'd lost a kilo. In spite of the resumption of the previous routine, she continued to decline and by just under a month of age, was back to her birthweight.
We decided to lock the pair in our llama shed at night. Michael, desperate to deliver more calories, cut the end off the teat and doubled the concentration of the feed. The response was dramatic. Laika's digestive system gave up completely. The milk he'd forced in at one end emerged from the other apparently untouched. Snowy found the change of sleeping quarters alarming and once more rejected her waif-like offspring. Not even the comfort of her mother's warm woolly body was available to her. It was the first of July, the weather forecast was grim and she weighed just 10 kilos.
Feeling desperately sad and utterly defeated, we shut them in for the night, turned off the light and went to bed. "Maybe Laika's problem was nature, not nurture and she'd always been a lost cause", I thought.
Early morning revealed the body of a little llama sprawled in an untidy heap at the back of the shed, with her mother leaning over the gate, desperate to be released. I gave Snowy her freedom and turned to the baby. She was stone cold and apparently lifeless. Heart-broken, I ran to tell Michael what I'd found. His examination revealed that the "corpse" was still breathing. I telephoned the vet, who came within the hour.
We'd wrapped her in a blanket and by the time Duncan arrived, she'd begun to make what I assumed was a death-rattle, a horrible, harsh, gurgling sort of noise. She was still unconscious and completely limp.
"Please put her down", I said. "Maybe she's got some congenital defect, and anyway, I've had enough of her suffering" (and mine too, although I didn't admit it). Michael, feeling guilty for precipitating the crisis, demurred. "Do you think you could revive her?" he asked. "Possibly," said Duncan. "I'll have a go, if you like". "You might as well", said Michael.
So I was outvoted in the matter of euthanasia, but the pathetic bundle dangling from Duncan's arms looked most unlikely to survive the journey to his surgery. In this, as I later got them both to admit, we'd all agreed.
"You'll do an autopsy?" I asked, as he laid her on the back seat of his jeep. He nodded and drove away. Michael went to work and I wept for poor Snowy, for her third dead baby, for all our wasted effort and for the terrible loss it represented in time, money and precious llama genes. Three hours later, having composed myself, I 'phoned the surgery. I waited to speak to Duncan. "What did you find?' I asked. "She's lifting her head up," he said. I didn't know whether to laugh or to cry.
Laika stayed at the surgery for 3 days, reclining under the operating table, attached to a drip-line. When we asked him how he'd snatched her from the jaws of death, Duncan said he wasn't sure what had done the trick, as he simply opened the 'fridge, filled syringes with everything he could think of, and stuck them into her... vitamins, minerals, antibiotics, steroids. Someone had drawn a sort of scribbly heap on the surgery whiteboard, with the caption "yes, I am alive". That was our Laika.
We brought her home on the 4th of July. She still couldn't stand unaided, so we propped her sitting between cushions in a baby playpen in front of the fire. At least she was hungry now, so that feeding her became, at last, a breeze. At Duncan's suggestion, I'd added a little honey and yoghurt to the milk mixture, which might have helped. After a day or so, when helped to her feet, she could stay standing, for minutes at a time. We were able to carry her to a little poo-pile in the front garden, and steady her whilst she relieved herself. That made a great improvement to her comfort and hygiene.
On her fifth night at home, I made the mistake of leaving her standing in her pen, when I went to bed. To my horror, morning revealed a tragic little figure still on her feet, with a head swollen to the size of a football. Michael reassured me that it was only accumulated fluid, so it was back to the folded and propped up llama routine for several more days, until her head returned to its normal size. By then she was strong enough to lift it, and could sit and rise unaided. A week later, she stopped feeding again, as a scrape from the wire of her pen had become infected, so it was back to the drip and another course of antibiotics.
After that, however, there were no more setbacks. Once she could walk a few steps alone, we moved her outside to the puppy enclosure which had its own lawn, as well as a roofed shelter. She wore an odd assortment of garments to keep her warm and dry, and we gave her a rejected lamb as a friend. Sadly, the friendship was brief, as the mother of Flossie the lamb knew more than we did and had rejected her for good reason. She had even more health problems than Laika. After a week or two, she was ill beyond saving, so Duncan put her down.
By the 19th of August, Laika weighed 20 kilos and by the 20th of November, both we, and our weighing machine gave up, at 50.5 kilos. Meanwhile, I'd helped her to walk , to run and even to pronk, again, by playing chasey with her around the orchard, to the great amusement of our neighbours. Most people, I suppose, would be entertained by the sight of a middle aged woman jumping about in the long grass and leaping out, squeaking and flailing, from behind an orange tree at a scrawny little llama in a flowered jacket. As the weather improved and she continued to thrive, we discarded the out-grown garments and returned her to the daytime company of Aria, Brighteyes, Tootie and her mother.
Snowy never reclaimed her daughter. The milk-bar was closed forever. Laika, having accepted her human foster mother, responded to the rejection by chest-butting Snowy and running back to me. Her status in our little female herd was firmly at the bottom, but she didn't seem to mind. She was happy just to be alive and well. That's the way she's remained, though the company of her own offspring, and particularly that of her daughters, has been an obvious pleasure for her. Laika, to our great relief, has a tremendous milk supply, and though both her daughters and her two grand-daughters have had similar fleeces, they haven't needed protection from the elements to thrive.
At the time of Laika's birth, our magazine collection had included several articles on the subject of "beserk llama syndrome". They emphasised the importance of minimal handling of orphanned cria. We'd had no choice in the matter, since she'd have starved if her only option had been an artificial mother. Her collapse and slow recovery required a great deal of human contact away from the other llamas. The method we used so successfully is the subject of another article.
She's never shown any sign of aggression towards humans, and remains gentle and affectionate with me, and with selected visitors. Sadly, and no doubt for her pin-cushion past, she dislikes and disdains both Duncan and Michael, much to their disgust, since it was their decision and Duncan's heroic treatment which saved her life.
We'd remated Snowy two weeks after Laika's birth, so a year later, she gave birth to Gershwin, a big strong male. This time, I knew what to do and started supplementary feeding him (folded up, of course) from day one. We did the same for Nellie Melba, U2 and Beowulf, though in Wulfie's case, since we were living elsewhere, we had to take him away at day one and feed him entirely on formula. He never looked back.
Sadly, we lost Snowy's last daughter to a bone infection, and since then we've not remated her. We probably never will again, though it's a temptation, given that her babies and our rearing technique have been so successful so far. I might have gone a bit over the top, ensuring that the boys behaved, for they're all a bit soppy and picked on by the other boys, but beserk? No way! And handsome? Just look at them!
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