Mimi's Mocha Milagro

Milagro means "miracle" in Spanish.  It is nothing short of a miracle that this little guy is doing so well.  He had one very rocky start!  Little Milagro, Milo for short, is our second suri cria born here at Ideuma Creek.  Mimi delivered him at 11:30AM in the barn right in front of me.  I caught his little head with a towel.  Like with Maddie, I was so excited to tell John about our new little dark brown - or was he rose grey? suri cria that I seemed to rush through the routine checking and treating of his navel.  He looked fine.  I was off to the house to let John know of our new cria. 

John was as excited as I was.  Milo was gorgeous!  Life went on as usual.  About half of an hour after his birth, I noticed Milo's eye was all bloodshot.  I immediately called our vet.  She assured me it was probably a blood clot in his eye that could have happened either during the pregnancy or just after his birth.  He would need to get two ointments in his eye for a week or so.  She would be over soon.  In the meantime, John and I were to wash out Milo's eye with saline solution.

By the time Dr. Camann got here, Milo's eye was the least of our worries.  It had been nearly six hours, and he hadn't nursed yet.  This has never happened to us before, and we weren't sure what to do.  We have been having crias here on our farm for more than seven years, and we didn't even own a bottle!  John raced off to a generous neighbor who raises goats and had colostrum in the freezer.  It wasn't that Milo didn't want to nurse, he was trying.  It was Mimi, his mom, who just was not sure she wanted him nosing around her teats.  Mimi had been a bottle baby and her first cria had been a bottle baby.  It wasn't that she didn't love Milo.  That was more than obvious.  She just wasn't sure what she was supposed to do.

We bottle fed Milo for his first two days of life.  We just weren't able to get enough colostrum in him, and he needed a transfusion.  A friend and fellow teacher from my school was here when Dr. Camann came to transfuse Milo.  John and I held Milo and Stephanie held his little IV bag.  We've had almost fifty crias born here and that  was only the second transfusion we've ever had to do at our farm.  He was weak.  Sometimes he would get out to the pasture with everyone else, but didn't have the strength to get back to the barn.  We were worried about him.

We worked and worked with Mimi trying to get her comfortable with this whole nursing thing.  We put her in a smaller section of the barn with only a few other nursing moms and their crias.  We gave her almost free choice grain.  When we fed Milo, we would make sure Mimi was right there and little by little we would shove Milo under her.

To make a very long story as short as possible, the miracle happened!  Mimi allowed and then even encouraged Milo to nurse!  It was one very happy day here at Ideuma Creek!  Milo is now gaining a quarter to a half of a pound a day.  He and Mimi are doing just fine.  We purposely didn't name Milo for a long time because we weren't sure just what was going to happen with him.  We already have a "Milagro" here at our farm.  Milagro, our guard llama, was named because he was the cria of  llama that survived an infection of meningeal worm while pregnant with him.  They never suspected she had carried her pregnancy, and when Milagro was born, it was a miracle for them.  We figured our gurad llama Milagro wouldn't mind sharing his wonderful name with a little alpaca cria that had such a difficult start to his life.  Mimi's Mocha Milagro is a fancy name for a beautiful, sweet little alpaca who has stolen our hearts!