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Love this little buggar!

I’m totally in love with this little cria that was born to my friend Stephanie Mize of Gulf Breeze Alpacas. The cria was sired by one of our herdsires. Guess which one? (Looks just like his daddy) I could blog about this kid all week. And I will later. On the road today. But I had to throw out the gratuitous cute baby pic. Smooches.

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“I saw the sweetest thing I’ve ever seen yesterday!” my husband Steve said.

We had both seen the same thing. Our macho herdsire, Magnum, kissing his daughter, Molly.

Magnum is the Mac Daddy

It is not unusual for a dam (momma alpaca) and cria to nibble and “kiss” at each others mouths. They nuzzle, touch noses, and love on each other. The males are kept in separate pens. They don’t usually interact with cria.

Magnum is housed in a run in the main barn between two pens of females. He can flirt with the girls in the next pen. He generally gets to breed with most of them when they are open so he holds court in the middle of the barn, and when everybody is bred he is the happy king of his castle. (He can tell when they are open and gets frisky to try to get to the girls to breed them.)

Magnum has a few offspring in the pens adjacent to his. We have seen him “talking” to his little sons over the fence, and we imagine him telling them about life, teaching them the ropes. But we have not been sure if he knew they are his offspring, or if he thought they were just cria, or if he thought he was such a stud that every cria was his!

Then we saw him with Molly. Molly is a Magnum daughter who is close to breeding age and size. She is big enough that Magnum would normally have figured out that she wasn’t pregnant, and would be orgling (alpaca mating noise designed to make the females weak in the knees) and jumping up on the panels that separated them. But he wasn’t doing this at all. He was kissing Molly. On the mouth. Sweet as a mother and new baby!

I first noticed it one morning as the alpacas were being brought into the barn. As soon as Molly came into her stall that adjoins Magnum, she went up to him and gave him a kiss. It was cute. But they stayed that way, just kissing on each other, nibbling, and touching noses. Before you think this is gross, let me tell you – this was NOT a sexual thing. I know our boy Magnum. He was NOT courting this girl. When he does that – it’s pretty obvious. He was gently loving her.

Freaking out at the extreme cuteness, I ran to get Jeremy, our farm manager, to borrow his phone to take pictures. “Oh yeah,” he said, “They were doing that yesterday.” Well they had stopped by the time I found a camera. I was disappointed that I wouldn’t be able to capture the moment.

When Steve said that he had seen the same thing as well, I was determined to capture it. These photos were taken on my phone over a 10 minute time frame where Magnum was completely, totally in love with his little girl.

These moments were so intimate, and their affection so strong, that it was a privilege to be able to witness (and record) them. Magnum is one of the most intelligent animals I have ever had the joy of knowing. I don’t doubt anymore that he knows his offspring. If I can recognize the resemblance, I am certain he can as well. Perhaps there is some sort of biological thing happening as well that allows him to know his cria. Whatever it is, we are so blessed to have this incredibly complex and wonderful male be a part of our lives.

What have you seen animals do that surprised you? What displays of animal emotion have touched your life?

I was on my way to my first crochet class. I looked out in the field and noticed a lovely little light fawn cria sitting up. Hmm. “That’s not Clark…Wait that’s Hope with that baby. That’s Hope’s baby! It’s here!”

Had to miss the crochet class. Ran over to her. Yes, it’s a her! We have had seven males in a row from our herdsire, SCA Peruvian Magnum. This little darling broke the streak. Don’t get me wrong, the Magnum sons are wonderful. Each one surprises me with how incredible he is. But, females are the name of the alpaca game and this sure is a pretty little one. She is the first cria from our dam, WRR Hope for A Cure. Hope was named in memory of a woman who died of cancer. We are donating a portion of the proceeds from the sales of all alpacas from Hope’s bloodline to cancer research. How great to have a female who can carry on that tradition.

Occasionally we will have cria that are born with curled up ears such as these. It’s kinda funny, kinda cute. Once we had one whose ears touched in the middle and made a heart. We named him “Curly”. I loved his ears so much, they made me smile. After a week or so I realized that when he grew up and was 170 lbs. – it would NOT look cute anymore. So we taped them and fixed them.

If you have a cria with ears that are turned inside out like these, turn them back the right way (as I have done in the top picture) several times a day. Often this alone will correct the ears. If that doesn’t work, manipulate the ears into the proper position and tape them up for a week or so using vet wrap or bandaging tape. Looks like I may have to tape this little one’s. Check back in a couple of weeks for the “AFTER” picture.

Thank you to Carol Knight of Alpaca Knights for sharing this picture of your lovely Magnum daughter and her mom.

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