Earlier this year one of our vets was called out to assist with a llama that was having difficulty giving birth. The cria (baby llama) had only the right leg protruding from his mother, with the left leg flexed back and preventing passage through the pelvis.

Medication was given to the hembra (female llama) to relax the uterus. With a lot of effort from all involved, she was restrained and the cria was pushed backwards into the uterus, making room for us to extend the left leg and safely deliver a live baby. Job done - for now...

The cria was premature, and too weak to stand and suckle. Along with this, the hembra retained her afterbirth, which poses a great risk of infection. 4 hours after the birth our vet returned to the farm and manually assisted in removing the afterbirth, greatly reducing her risk of uterine infection.

As the cria still wasnt up at this time, we had to physically milk out the colostrum from the mother and feed to the baby. This involved a bunch of us basically piling onto this huge llama and holding her down as we milked out tiny spurts of colostrum and tried not to get kicked or spat on!!

Due to great diligence by the owners, that cria was bottle fed every 2 hours, and after several days, was able to stand. His mother and he managed to bond well despite the huge level of human intervention, and he has since grown into quite the specimen!