Another new cria!

It always seems like a VERY long time waiting for alpaca babies to arrive. You spend months deciding which male will improve on each female in your herd, you breed them, then you wait to see if it "took". After waiting and testing, and waiting more and testing more, you finally take a deep breath and convince yourself that she is, indeed, pregnant. Next is the REAL wait. Nearly a year later (and sometimes even longer!) you spend every waking hour thinking "When is the cria coming?", "Is there something wrong with the cria?", "Was that the cria kicking I saw?", "Is the cria positioned right for birthing?", "Will I miss the birth?", "Has it been too long?", "Should I DO something?" and a million other questions and doubts that mean exactly ZERO to the mom or the cria unless you act on your worries and get the mom stressed out, at which time she kicks it into 'low gear' and effectively delays the birth until you leave her the hell alone long enough to get the job done without any "help".


That's the stance I took with Halle Berry. Just let her have her cria on her own time. Well, she finally did, and I missed it. I had been gone for less than 10 minutes when my cellphone rang with the news that she was in heavy labor. We turned around and, in trying not to kill anyone, we were too late to see it hit the ground. When we arrived, just trying to stand for the first time was a gorgeous black boy next to Halle. The wait was finally over. He was perfect.

His sire's name is Black Mist and with his mother's name being Halle Berry we combined the two to come up with his name... Black Berry.