If you were reading yesterday you will know that we had a new arrival while we weren't looking and having matched him up with his mum we than had to make sure we saw him drinking and taking that all important first milk which contains colostrum and gives the cria its immune capability.




This is what the udder looks like when its full of milk and you can even see that the teats are distended there is so much milk. Now this in itself can be a problem because the teats can become too big to go into the babys mouth.



Here he is in the right location but no tell tale milk moustache to prove he has been sucking and getting milk

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By nudging the cria on the butt and blowing onto him she helps stimulate him into sucking.



Here he is almost on the teat, we had checked his suckle reaction and that was fine.

After a few hours of him trying and not making it and me pacing about impatiently we decided to crack open the frozen colostrum and to start milking his mother. He couldn't get the hang of the artificial teat either so we had to dribble it in with a syringe in the end.

We repeated this every hour or so....until late on Saturday night when he finally discovered where the self service milk bar was located....

Adrian Stewart