She has been called Ayhmara after the Ayhmara indians who have watched over alpacas in Peru for centuries, and even today they watch over these herds. They live a very remote, existance, and need all the resilience they can get to survive the harshness of this region..........Ayhmara also needed this century old resilience to pull her through.

We first noticed Anika in early signs of labour at about 10am on Monday 7/8/07, and the labour was progressing as normal, by 11am, she was starting to present, and we could see what we first saw we thought it was the nose.

But it just did not look right.

And it was not coming out at all.

As Elyse massaged Anika's birthing area, to try and manipulate the header further out, we then noticed this was not a nose, but a foot, and the opening we saw, was the division between the toes.

Our first thoughts then was a breach baby, but yet the shape of anika's area, seemed to be the shape of a head.

We called the vets anyway.

then the leg popped through the opening, and we could then see behind the leg a nose.

We really do not want legs coming through the same times as a head, as this makes it too  bigger area to pull through, we really want the head, and legs to follow, meanwhile the head was proceeding to push.

Elyse pushed the leg gently back inside, and manipulated again, to see where the other leg is, as we want to make sure one leg is not back. Once the leg was back, and the head was also gently pushed back, Elyse manipulated the two legs around so they would come out the same time as the neck, once the head was out.

and gently pulled the head, and baby out.

After all the excitement, The vet arrived, there was a lot of blood, as the extra stretching for Anika, we wanted the vet to make sure that in the birthing process there were no tears, inside the uterus, nor at the vulva.

The vet gave her the all clear.

There is a normal shiver complex that crias will do about 5 mins after birth and this will last for approx 15 mins, as all it's organs start working and the bloodstream starts circulating the oxygen through the lungs.

after about half an hour though she was still shivering, and although it was not a cold day, and the sun was out, she was very cold.

follow the pictures as the story unfolds.

The first thing we did was put her in a warm bath, but her body temp did not take any readings so she was under 28 degrees. normal body temp is 37.5-38.5

Photos start at left go down and then anti clockwise

Elyse hopped in the bath with Ayhmara, and kept filling the bath with hotter water, and emptying out the colder water, whilst she

was cupping the water all over her body, and imersing her solely under the water always careful to keep the head up out of the water.'This process took over 1 hour to get her temp to reading 35 degrees. you can see now (below) the baby is trying to swim and kick its legs

Mischka, (motherly shitzu), was so concerned she watches on with interest (right) while elyse towel dries and uses a haridryer to try and still boost up that body heat, monitoring the body temp, and also makings sure she does not burn the cria with the hairdryer.

1 1/2 hrs later she attempts to stand, and she is starting to feel alive

Still towel rubbing to keep circulations, and keep moving legs back and forth, as well as hairdrying all areas., and keeping an eye of the body temp.

Now to get her to drink off mum.

Anika being a maiden knew she had the baby, but was eagr to own up to her, but did not want her to go under her tummy to get a drink, so the next saga of our story, so we tip mum over on her side, one holding the head down, and elyse folding Anika's back legs and leaning her legs on them so as to stop Anika kicking back, whilst we squeexe milk from each teat and move babies                      head from tat to teat to teat, until she emties the

             udder

The baby is alive, it may still for a while while it gasps some breaths, and then it will start wriggling around, an between 1/2 hour old, (bottom right), and normally just around an hour old they will start looking for a drink, starting as the next photo with its tail up, they say,                                                and i believe it is true                                             the tail is up while they                                          look for a drink and                                                it goes down when they                                          are getting some milk