What a day.
We have had girls hanging on to their babies for silly amounts of time this year, until this afternoon that is, when Blossom decided to give birth in the rain at 317 days. Blossom always births quite early but this is far too early even for her, her average gestation period for her two previous daughters is 334 days.
Her latest daughter, yes three girls on the trot (you may recall Blossom doesn't like boys so clearly managed to steer clear of producing one again this year) is obviously much smaller than her usual babies weighing in at 5.8kg. She is very weak and was struggling, unable to stand and initially with no suck reflex.
After warming her and failing to get any suck on a bottle I resorted to tube feeding her a mixture of Blossom's colostrum which we milked and some powdered colostrum. It's very early days but since the initial tube feed I've managed to get her to suck on a bottle and have been milking Blossom.
We are struggling to keep her temperature up though, so we have had to bring her into the house and wrapped her up. She's been back out to her mum a couple of times who is shut in and there is a bond there so hopefully tomorrow we will be able to reunite mum and baby.
Friday, 5 June 2009
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6 comments:
Fingers crossed for you . We had a cria like that about 2 yrs ago , Cerys , if its any hope for you she is expecting her first cria now , and is one of the biggest animals in the herd .Keep milking !
Good work Debbie, I'm sure with the high levels of care at Barnacre she''ll be fine.
Best wishes.
with all your dedication,love and attention you give your animals i am sure she couldnt be in better hands. xx
Thanks for your kind thoughts. After a total of two hours sleep last night, so far so good. Off to do another milking now.
Wishing you all the luck you need to pull this baby through, if any one can do it you can. Everything is crossed for you up here at Scotland....all the best.....Jayne
Debbie you are doing a fab job of getting this wee one going.... what a testing time for you. I am sure with your care she will be fine. Hope all is going well!!!
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