The Orphaning of a Cria

This article is about the care and nurturing of a cria who was orphaned the day before she attained two months of age.

We are writing this article for those who are new to raising llamas and for those who are thinking about raising llamas. We acquired our first llamas on April 15^th of this year and are rapidly gaining experience. We hope that more experienced llama owners will expand on this important topic by add­ing their own experiences and suggestions.

Our story has not ended. Our orphaned cria is now just over three months of age. We will not know the long-term effects of the loss of her mother for some time to come. We are confident that she will survive.

Our first piece of advice for anyone who experiences an orphaning for the first time is that you are not alone and not without resources. We sought and obtained much advice from our veterinarian, the owners of the farm from whom we obtained the cria, various members of the Maine Llama Association, various members of GALA and John Mallon. We called John because we had recently attended one of his courses.

Our second piece of advice is not to expect all the suggestions to be consistent and non-contradictory. The advice we received ranged from not to even try to bottle feed the cria to various methods of encouraging the cria to take the bottle. When we bought our first llamas the owners of the farm told us that we can expect to receive many varying opinions on any subject concerning llamas and that we should sort through what we hear and choose that which we feel is appropriate to the situation. We believe that all the suggestions and advice we received have merit and we intend to keep them in mind for the next time that we are faced with the situation. However, not all the suggestions and advice we received were workable for our current situation.

We believe that each situation is unique:

·         Our cria had been able to nurse for almost two months. We feel that this had a definite bearing on her unwillingness to take a bottle. If she had lost her mother shortly after birth we believe that she would have been much more willing to accept a substitute.

·         Our cria has access to pasture that remained green throughout the summer despite the drought that plagued the Northeast. We had been fortunate to have several very heavy thunderstorms during some critical periods of the summer. We have a large amount of clover in one of our pastures and the cria instinctively concentrated on foraging on the clover.

·         One of our yearlings ‘adopted’ the cria and provided the emotional support the cria required.

Our cria has sensed her nutritional needs and is actively working to meet them. Our first inkling that her mother was in trouble came when the cria seemed to be working the pasture an unusual amount and that her attempts at nursing seemed unproductive. After her mother died the cria, for a brief period of time, spent a lot of time consuming minerals, which we have available on a free-feeding basis. Her consumption of minerals now follows a more normal pattern. She has shown a definite preference for Young’s minerals, which are no longer available. She spends substantially more time grazing in the pasture than any of our other llamas. She consumes her fair share of hay. We suspect that, within the past 48 hours, she has started to consume grain … but more about that later.

Over the past month the cria’s energy level has increased substantially and she is gaining ½ pound per day. She is small for her age but her weight is appropriate for her frame. She is noticeably growing in stature each day. She is by far the more playful of our two crias.

By now you may have gathered that we are not bottle feeding the cria. The cria rejected all our attempts at bottle feeding her. After several weeks of attempting to bottle feed her with no success, we concluded that further attempts would be counterproduc­tive because of the attendant stress. A major factor in our decision not to continue was that she seemed to be doing well without it. We want to stress that our decision was based on the particular circumstances and that, under different circumstances, we would not hesitate to bottle-feed.

The first step in bottle-feeding is to find a position for you and the cria that gives you a measure of control of the process. We found that kushing the cria and then straddling the cria (on your knees) from the behind with the cria’s neck cushioned in your right arm (for those who are right handed) to be the most successful. Angling the cria’s head upwards is desirable since it is the typical nursing posture. To kush the cria we lifted the cria up and folded the rear legs. The front legs then seemed to auto­matically fall into the kushing position. Our cria quickly learned what we were doing and seemed to help us. However, she has now grown to a size and strength where we can no longer easily kush her.

The next step is to open the cria’s mouth and to depress the tongue. This is best accomplished with your thumb and forefin­ger pressed against the cria’s front teeth.

Our cria had no interest in the bottle. She would not suckle. We tried both Lamb Milk Replacer and whole cow’s milk, both of which had been recommended to us. For nipples we tried a lamb nipple, a cria nipple and a baby nipple. We tried squeezing the nipple to give the cria a taste of the milk. It was suggested that our cria’s reticence was due to her not being hungry because of her attention to grazing and that we might try depriving her of the pasture and hay. We did not try this last suggestion. The fact that she seems to be thriving was a factor in this decision.

It was suggested that we put applesauce on the nipple as an inducement for her to suckle.

Since our cria had no interest in the bottle we have been hoping that she would take an early interest in grain so as to have ample protein in her diet.

We immediately constructed a temporary cria creep. For any newcomers who are unfamiliar with the concept of a cria creep, it is an area which it is easy for a cria to get into but which has barriers to prevent the entry of older, and larger, llamas. This is to facilitate the free feeding of the cria without harassment by older llamas who, given the chance, would eat the food set out for the cria.

Our cria was initially timid about entering the creep. To overcome this timidity we did two things:

·        We allowed her ‘adoptive mother’ to get into the creep with her. While her ‘mother’ would quickly devour the grain, it did give the cria the confidence to enter and exit the creep. The unrestricted size of the entry to the creep was sufficient to allow a yearling to enter, but not a matured llama. We left the creep unrestricted for several nights in a row with a measured amount of grain. The older llama devoured the grain while the cria became comfortable with spending time in the creep. The cria would eat the hay in the creep. After the cria became comfortable with the creep we restricted the entry to prevent her “mother” from entering it.

·        We sat with the cria in the creep for extended periods of time. Using a variation of a technique learned from John Mallon, we would reward the cria with letting her exit the creep when she calmed down. As long as she was restive we would quietly sit in the creep barring the exit. As soon as she became calm, we would move away from the exit giving her the opportunity to leave.

She is now quite comfortable with entering the creep and eating the hay that we keep there for her. We also have grain available to her in the creep. We are using two techniques to determine whether or not she is beginning to eat the grain:

·        We put a measured amount of grain in the bowl and then measure the amount of grain in the bowl the next day.

·        We smooth out the grain in the bowl and put one of our initials in the grain. If the initial is gone or smudged we know that the grain has been touched.

Within the past 48 hours some grain has been eaten. Our other cria is beginning to show interest in grain; however, she has been timid about entering the creep. Accordingly, we do not think that it is this other cria. We will not be sure until we see which cria is beginning to eat the grain in the creep. Alternatively, if our orphan begins putting on more than ½ pound per day we will know that she is the one that is consuming the grain.

Several suggestions have been made to us that will be effective only when our cria is consuming grain:

·       We place the dry lamb milk replacer in her grain so as to provide additional calcium in her diet. We will try this. We have found that the dry lamb milk replacer attracts flies to the grain. Thus we may not try this very long unless the grain is quickly consumed.

·        We mix Calf Manna in the grain. Calf Manna has a higher level of protein than your traditional grain mix. It is high in copper, which concerns us. If we do follow this suggestion we will closely monitor the consumption of the Calf Manna.

One suggestion we have not yet tried is mixing the grain with applesauce to form a gruel type mixture. We believe that this is worthy of trial if your cria is not interested in the grain.

Jump-Start Plus, an oral probiotic paste, was suggested to us as a means to enhance the appetite of our cria. We have used it. The energy level of our cria began to increase shortly after we started this regi­men. This may have been coincidental. Since the product can cause no harm we will most likely use it again if faced with a similar problem in the future. To use it you assume a position similar to that I recommend for bottle feeding, insert the applicator into the mouth of the cria and place a measured amount on the back of the tongue. This sounds easier than it really is. I recommend the use of two people in this exercise.

We weigh our cria every two to three days. Since we are looking at rather small changes in weight we always weigh the cria at the same time of day to eliminate normal variations that may occur during a day.

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