Somedays I Wonder If I'm Cut Out To Be a Farmer

It's been an emotional couple of weeks.

I've found myself facing some of the hardest parts of farming, and honestly, some days I wonder if I'm cut out to be a farmer.

That probably sounds like a strange thing to say after sixteen years of raising alpacas. People assume that experience makes this part easier. That after enough births, enough seasons, enough years of caring for livestock, you somehow become accustomed to the losses that inevitably come with them.

You don't. At least, I don't.

What experience does give you is the ability to notice things that other people might not. Tiny changes. Small details. Things that, on their own, don't seem to mean much, but together tell a story.

Sometimes that's a gift, and… sometimes it's a burden.

This past Thursday, just before our morning tour, I told my staff that I thought Summer was going to have her baby. She was 336 days pregnant and well within the "window."  She wasn't bursting at the seams... she could just as easily popped the day before or gone another couple of weeks.

But I saw something.

My staff looked at her, then looked back at me.

"What is it you're seeing?" one of them asked.

I remember looking back at Summer, trying to put it into words. It wasn't one thing, it was a bunch of small things. The kinds of things that don't mean anything... until they do. Summer's teats had changed just a little... a little wider, a little shorter. She seemed just a little more unsettled than the day before, and she stood just a little stiller out in the paddock. Nothing dramatic. Nothing that would catch the eye of someone simply walking through the pasture.

Our tour began at 10 a.m. with a group of four.

I told them I thought Summer was getting close, but I also reminded them that alpacas don't read the textbooks. I could be completely wrong. She might deliver in two minutes... or two hours... or two weeks.

So we watched.

For fifteen or twenty minutes we stood together talking about alpacas and interpreting Summer’s behaviour. She rubbed her face and body against the ground and the fence. She lay down carefully, almost tentatively, then stood up again almost immediately. She headed back to the manure pile.

I explained what I was seeing, but I also reminded them that these were simply clues. I could still be wrong.

Eventually I offered the group a choice. One of my staff could continue the tour while I stayed with Summer, or they could stay and see what happened.

They decided to continue with the tour.

By the time they finished seeing the boys, Summer had entered the transition stage of labour. She was ready to push.

I called everyone over and within moments, Summer’s water broke.

My excitement lasted about half a second before it gave way to something else.

In sixteen years, I'd only had one other birth where the water broke before any part of the cria appeared. That delivery didn't end well. I quickly pushed the thought away.

I found myself staring, willing a nose to appear. When it did, I felt the first wave of relief. I held my breath again as I waited for feet.

It didn't take long, but in those moments it felt much longer. I counted them as they appeared.

One.

Two.

And, yep... front feet. Exactly what I wanted to see.

From there everything unfolded just as it should. Summer worked steadily through her contractions and, within a few minutes, a tiny little girl was lying on the grass.

She looked small.  Again, I worried.

Why was she so small? Summer had carried her for 336 days, a completely normal pregnancy. Baby's ears were upright. She wasn't down on her pasterns. Her teeth had erupted. Everything told me she was a full-term cria.

So why was she so small? Again, I pushed the thoughts aside.

As I do with every newborn, I worked through my mental checklist. I toweled her dry, cleared her nose and mouth, checked all the signs of a full-term cria and confirmed she was a little girl.

Everything looked normal.

She righted herself almost immediately. She was a little slow getting to her feet, but still within the normal limits. Once she stood, she did exactly what every healthy cria should do. She started looking for the dairy bar.

Summer did everything right. She stood quietly while I removed the wax plugs from her teats. Her udder was full and milk expressed easily. The little cria found a teat, latched quickly and then I heard it. That unmistakable suckling sound.

Relief.

One of my staff looked at me and asked, "What are you going to name her?"

I smiled.

"I don't know yet."

The truth is, I rarely have names picked out ahead of time. And I almost never name a cria until they're several days old... because, you never know...

People often think the birth is the finish line. It isn't. It's the beginning of another series of questions.

Will she stand?

Will she nurse?

Is she strong enough?

Is there something I've missed?

It's why I love having babies...

...and why I hate having babies.

The rest of the herd wandered over to meet their newest member. Summer became understandably protective, so I stepped back and watched from a distance. I saw the little one nurse several times. I heard that reassuring suckle each time and slowly let myself breathe, thinking that perhaps my concerns about her size had been unfounded.

Later that afternoon, I watched as Summer led her towards the barn.  The cria wobbled slightly before she folded into a cush and rolled onto her side.  She lay there completely limp. For a moment I thought she'd lost consciousness... did I watch her turn blue?

I rushed to her, picked her up and carried her into the barn. I settled her onto the hay while I went to gather a few supplies.

By the time I came back, she was sitting upright in a perfect cush... pink, and looking completely normal.

If someone had walked into the barn at that moment, they would have seen a newborn cria resting comfortably. But I'd seen what happened. And in that moment, I knew.

There was something wrong.

I spent the next twenty-four hours trying to save her. Or maybe, if I'm completely honest, I was hoping I could somehow change an outcome that, deep down, I already knew couldn't be changed.

I questioned if I was wrong about the nursing. I'd watched her latch. I'd heard her suckle. But maybe she wasn't getting enough milk after all. So every couple of hours I bottle-fed her.

I milked Summer and fed the baby her colostrum. I gave the cria whatever she would take.

Sitting cushed, she looked almost normal… a beautiful little cria. It was only when she tried to stand that everything fell apart. She simply didn't have the strength.

She would struggle to her feet, wobble, collapse, turn blue, and then somehow gather herself enough to return to a cush looking bright and alert as though nothing had happened. As the hours passed, the episodes became more frequent and more severe.

Each time I hoped it would be the last episode.  Each time another one came.

When I went out to the barn for her 9:30pm feeding Friday night, I found her lying quietly beside Summer. She was gone.

I'd been preparing myself for that moment since the night before. Still, it hurt. I left her with Summer overnight.

I was back at the barn early Saturday morning. Partly because there was work to do, but mostly because I didn't want my staff to discover the little cria the way I had. When I opened the barn door, Summer and her baby were exactly where I'd left them.

I let the rest of the herd outside. Summer lingered for a moment beside her cria before finally following the others. I wrapped the little one in a blanket. I let Summer come over one last time. She lowered her head, looked at her baby and took in her scent. Then I carried the little girl away.

When my staff arrived later that morning, I told them what had happened. They quietly gave me the space to talk through the previous twenty-four hours and everything I'd seen.

Summer's little girl 💜

When Experience Becomes a Burden

I've replayed every moment since Summer’s water broke more times than I can count.

Could I have done something differently? Should I have seen something sooner? Should I have made a different decision? I think every livestock owner asks themselves those questions after a loss.  I certainly do.

The more I've thought about it, though, the more I've come to a different conclusion.

This little cria didn't die because she was small. She was small because something else was wrong.

Looking back now, the pieces fit together. The episodes where she appeared to lose consciousness. The cyanosis when she tried to stand. The progressive weakness despite nursing, bottle-feeding and receiving Summer's colostrum.

Everything points to an underlying problem that was almost certainly there before she ever took her first breath.

For twenty-four hours, I did everything I knew how to do.

But for all the questions, there is one thing I don't wonder about. Whether this little cria was loved.  She was. By Summer… and me.

Stardust

As difficult as the last few days have been, this wasn't simply one heartbreaking loss.

Summer's little girl arrived while I was still carrying the weight of another little girl's story.

Her name was Stardust.

Some of you may remember that last summer I purchased two females with crias at side so that Roller's baby, Downie would have some companions her own age. They didn't arrive until late November, and one of those little girls was Stardust.

I haven't shared her story until now because I'd been waiting on final pathology reports and there were conversations with her breeder that needed to happen first. I wanted to resolve those privately and respectfully before writing about her.

Shortly after her arrival, it became clear that something wasn't quite right.  Again, it was subtle things.

We managed her symptoms as best we could here on the farm, always hoping the next change in management or the next treatment might make a difference.  It became clear shortly after return from my trip in mid-May that we needed answers that only the Atlantic Veterinary College could provide.

The diagnosis revealed a congenital condition that no one could have known about beforehand, and that couldn't be corrected.

The kindest decision was also the hardest one.

Stardust's story ended there.

I was still carrying that loss when Summer went into labour.

Stardust 💜

The Hardest Part of Farming

I don't know if losing animals ever gets easier.

Experience doesn't harden you against it. If anything, it makes you notice more. You recognize the subtle signs sooner. You understand what they might mean. And sometimes you realize long before anyone else that things may not end the way you're hoping.

That's a difficult burden to carry. And it makes me wonder some days if I'm cut out to be a farmer.

But then morning comes.

There are fences to mend. Feed to carry. Water buckets to scrub. Tour guests waiting to meet alpacas they already think they'll love.

And somewhere out in the pasture, another pregnant female will quietly tell me… through a hundred tiny details almost nobody else would notice… that today might be the day.

I'll watch…and I'll hope. And I'll do it all over again.

Personal note: If you've followed Green Gable Alpacas for a while, thank you for allowing me to share not only the joyful moments, but also the difficult ones. Farming is both, and I believe it's important to tell the whole story.
Thanks for being here, Janet 💜