Introducing Upper Alpacas Emma

Ipo Nani delivered our final cria of 2006 this morning – yet another girl. After four male cria to start our alpaca business, we have been blessed with five female cria in a row. I guess all that complaining about starting with four boys has paid off – either that or the statistics that inevitably catch up have caught up with us.

Mother and cria are doing well. Emma is Ipo Nani's first cria and she's done very well for a new mom. The birth was relatively easy and Emma was trying to nurse before she could stand. Ipo has been very attentive and has an excellent nursing instinct. One never knows how an alpaca will handle her first delivery or respond to her first cria. Ipo is proving to be a very good mom and we're quite pleased.



Emma is a sleepy baby and still wobbly on her legs. Morghan was running the pasture her first day. Emma runs about twenty steps. She's been spending most of the day nursing and sleeping. Cria start differently, and within a week, we expect Emma to be racing Morghan across the pasture.

None of our female alpacas are pregnant at the moment. Alpaca gestation is 345 +/- 30 days. It's going to be quite some time before I can once again substitute an impending cria for actual blog content. Cria pictures may entertain for the next month, but sometime soon, I have to get back to the fiber so I have fiber content to blog about.