Miracle Cria??

We have had our first cria of the year, and he's a bit special for a few reasons, in fact he's a bit of a miracle really; let me explain.

Sunburst had outside matings booked and as he was only just starting his working life we needed to make sure he would work before he had visiting ladies.  So on 11th May 2013 Carol was the lucky lady, or so we thought; she took a little persuading but like a true pro Sunburst got her down and did the deed, 13 minutes later he was one happy boy!

A week later she went mad when we put her back to Sunburst, as she did for the next three weeks, so we were very hopeful.  As she'd not been too keen to mate and Carol is slightly mad and it was the first Sunburst mating we thought we would get her scanned.

At 45 days she was scanned empty, not wanting to believe Sam, our vet I decided to wait until he did the next batch of scanning and try her again.  Still spitting off and with a fancy new scanning machine she was scanned again at 81 days, both rectally and trans-abdominally, both negative.  So extremely disappointed the vet estrumated her thinking she had a retained corpus luteum.  This drug is also to terminate pregnancies, so if Carol was pregnant she would/should have aborted her cria.

Despite numerous attempts throughout the summer we never managed to mate Carol to Sunburst or any other male (we tried a few!).

Early in the new year I though Carol was looking pregnant, thinking I was mad I dismissed the idea, but it became more and more noticeable.  So next worry was would the Estrumate have caused any birth defects or damage?  The vet had never known estrumate not to work so it was a wait and see thing.

Well cooked at 367 days Carol decided to finally give birth, to a healthy 9.56kg fawn boy; phew!

He has a lovely bright shine fleece, as we have found with quite a few well cooked babies it was quite suri like, but is now starting to tighten up.

He is always on the go and desperate for a playmate so we're hoping he wont have long to wait.  We have 13 girls over 330 days now, Imala is furthest on at 362!

Paul has named him Invisible Sam, after the Queen song, Invisible man, and our vet Sam who saw right through him on two scanned.  For anyone not familiar with the lyrics..... 

"I'm the invisible man,

I'm the invisible man

Incredible how you can

See right through me

I'm the invisible man

I'm the invisible man

It's criminal how I can

See right through you."

Queen - The Invisible Man