P&CW's Judith TwilightStar

On the bright, sunny Sunday afternoon of November 8, 2009, Vanne’s unusual behavior caught my attention and gave me reason to believe she might be in labor. In addition to her sway-backed posture, then present for weeks at the end of her pregnancy, she was alternately lying down and standing up, often holding her tail up in a flag, and paying more attention to something within than outside of her. When I tried to get Goldie Rose and Lili GrayClouds to head in for the night, Goldie was resolute in her refusal to abandon her pasture mate. When I realized that Goldie must be staying to watch over Vanne, and to provide her some measure of safety during the birthing process, I stopped trying to usher her indoors. Goldie stayed close to Vanne providing alpaca support, and Lili stayed close to her mother.


Along with each wave of contractions came a glimpse of a black nose encased in a slippery sac. The nose appeared and disappeared a few times before the full head emerged, then the spindly long forelegs. When Vanne took to walking around the pasture with the head and legs dangling behind her I sensed that something was amiss. For one, it appeared that the head was below the legs and tilted in such a way as to signify that the cria was emerging upside-down, or spine-down and belly-up. A call to Thistledown Alpacas reached voicemail, so I hurried into the house to find the text on alpaca neonatology housed in my office. The literature was clear: if indeed the cria was turned upside down, well then I was facing one of the rarest birth complications, and one that is exceedingly difficult to correct. So I called Theresa next door.

“Hey there, would either of you like to come over to play midwife in the home pasture with me?” I asked. Practically as soon as I closed the phone, Tony appeared. Thank heavens for Tony: he is calm and steady, practical and gentle, level-headed and experienced. True he likely had no experience in delivering alpacas, but his ability to generalize his youthful experiences with cows would prove invaluable yet again.

Vanne had moved to a patch of bare ground, so I was trying to strew fresh straw about her when Tony entered the pasture. Dusk was gathering rapidly but we had enough light to study Vanne’s situation and, lying down as she was, the cria appeared to be positioned properly—contrary to my earlier assessment. This was a huge relief to me; however, as we watched Vanne experienced more contractions with the cria making no further progress along the birth canal.

Another call, this time to Ruth Fuqua, President of the Tennessee Alpaca Association, owner of Hickory Bluff Farms (which is "just down the road" in Mt. Juliet), and co-owner of the New Era Fiber Mill. She suggested the same thing Tony had, that the cria was likely stuck at the shoulders and the dam could use a bit of assistance. I was concerned with how fragile I understood alpacas to be and Ruth granted that this was not a cow and I need not bring out the tractor and use chains to pull the cria loose. A gentle but firm manual pull during a contraction might be just what Vanne needed. I got off the phone as another contraction started, placed my gloved hands on the slippery cria, and tugged. A dark form slipped free of its dam and slid onto the fresh straw around my knees!

Vanne was tired and allowed Tony and me to peel the birth sac off of her little one. We admired her new cria’s extraordinarily long legs, noted that the hooves were even less well-developed than Lili’s had been—indeed they seemed to be all pad and no hoof, and determined that the new arrival was female. Each time the cria attempted to stand, she wound up tumbling further downhill and I decided that ‘twas time for the mamas to take their young in for the night.

Tony stayed and helped until we got the gals and their crias settled into separate stalls indoors, with Goldie’s Spencer free to roam outside. By this time Vanne was humming with consternation and it took me the better part of a day to realize that she was objecting to being closed in apart from Goldie. By the time I had resolved that trauma for Vanne, her cria was fully in charge of those spidery legs of hers and could romp and skip about without tumbling over at all.

Beginning the new cria’s name was simple: Judith Ann; this dark little alpaca, who appeared to be colored like her dam whose color is best described as maroon, would carry the name of a dear friend of ours, Judy, and make her proud. Although Phyllis said that we ought to name her for Tony, and both Toni and Antonia are pretty names, Judith Ann was the name next in line for important offspring. Then, just as Lili GrayClouds was named for the bleak weather enveloping the earth at the time of her arrival, Judith Ann needed a similar descriptor. Above our heads the sky was blanketed with bright stars, and the evening’s chill had descended around us. For some days I was stuck on Judith of the Twilight Gloaming, a name that even I could recognize was too much. At some point Judith TwilightStar entered my consciousness and sounded right. Thus, P&CW’s Judith TwilightStar was born and named.