Update on Victor

I always have the best of intentions when it comes to updating the blog, and then one thing or another comes up and time gets away from me...

Our new "surprise" cria Victor is already a couple of weeks old and is doing great! Although his mother was originally not allowing him to nurse, we were able to get her more comfortable with letting him practice nursing from her. Unfortunately, Victor felt that he was getting milk more easily from the bottle so he loses interest in nursing from his mom. So here we go with a bottle-fed male cria. We tried every day to get him to nurse on his own while supplementing with the bottle, but we could see that it just wasn't going to work.

Fortunately we were able to get enough of his mother's colostrum the first day. We also gave him his mother's milk for a few days by milking her. Ultimately though, we've been feeding him milk replacer five times each day and he's steadily gaining weight and is a very eager eater.

We're on cria watch again...this time it's Misty. She's looking as though she'll give us a new cria soon so I'll post it as soon as she delivers the goods! Take care all.