Manna From Heaven

There’s no getting away from it – we all turn a bit mushy when a new baby arrives on the scene and this is as true when a llama baby arrives as with the ugly human variety.

A couple of weeks ago Snowball produced yet another. For the first time we able to watch the entire performance or rather the lack of it. To Snowball, having a baby appears to be a mild interruption in the day’s eating schedule. From the waters breaking to depositing the soggy jumble of bones and wool in the dust took around twenty minutes and not a sound to be heard.

Snowball is pretty experienced at the baby game and this, her seventh offspring, was delivered with apparent ease.

She was attempting to urinate when the water sac appeared and the waters broke within a minute. Less than a minute after that two small feet appeared at the window and Snowball ambled around for a few minutes seeking the most appropriate place and position to finish the job.

Within five minutes a head had popped out and the legs had stretched to about 18inches long.

The advice is always DO NOT GET INVOLVED except in an emergency. It’s really easy for medically brainwashed humans to believe that something might go wrong, but those instances are extremely few and far between. The baby thrashes its head and legs, struggling to free itself from the vice like grip of the pelvic muscles, but every now and again it sags and hangs limply from the back end of the mother. This isn’t a problem, the poor little creature is utterly exhausted and is just resting for the next Herculean attempt at escape.

Snowball stands up and sits down every couple of minutes as the pressure and pain increase, but once the baby’s shoulders are through, she’s up on her feet enabling gravity to drag it free.

The baby made little use of the ‘air time’ before hitting the dust nose first. Welcome to the Big Bad World baby! Of course, what should be a beautiful moment is rather ruined by the image of a bundle of soggy white dirt and slime covered pipe-cleaners, flopping around in the llama’s favourite dust bath.

I understand that llamas give birth according to the weather. They need to ensure the baby is dry and mobile before the afternoon rains fall in their natural, South American, habitat. Snowball waits for the warmest day of September to give birth and always in the morning, although we aren’t usually bothered by afternoon rains in Central BC, but the cold can be quite dramatic.

Snowball turns and casually sniffs the writhing bundle before turning her attention to the afterbirth – apparently a more difficult operation for her with much straining involved as the afterbirth is somewhat less cooperative than a squirming baby, gagging for air and desperate for a drink.



Once again, the mother stands and lets gravity take over, slowly drawing the massive placenta and associated pipework out of the body. I haven’t heard of llamas eating the afterbirth, being strict vegans and the mother’s instinct is to get herself and the baby as far away from this bloody beacon for predators as possible. To avoid attracting the coyotes, wolves, ravens and other predators we promptly dug a hole in the field and buried the placenta.

Usually, the baby is up on its feet within five or ten minutes and this new born bundle of fluff was no exception. A few shaky starts and a few nose dives, then bingo! She’s mobile. It took me more than a year to learn to do that and I only had two legs to coordinate!

Of course, the arrival of a baby is cause for the entire herd to gather and pay homage. The poor little thing has a llama blowing in every orifice for the first 30 minutes of its life and as the mother leads the baby away from the birth site and possible danger, she has an entire llama entourage as company.


Manna (as the new baby has been named) eventually found the right place to suckle after about two and a half hours. They should, according to the professionals, be suckling within four hours, otherwise directions should be given. However, the baby is usually desperately tired after the effort of re-entry into the atmosphere and just wants to sleep for while – so let it.

The flies move in to clean up the remnants of membrane and mucus and actually perform an essential task in cleaning the nose, ears and eyes, so don’t be tempted to chase them away!

Less than one day old and she was rolling in the dust with the rest of the herd and within 2 days she was lining up to use the bean piles and testing her speed and acceleration. At five days old she was grazing and chewing the cud. Simply amazing!