Under fire

I feel the need to write this blog posting. I don't really want to but I have to get it out of my system and move on.
We have had the worst week that I can remember since we started breeding alpacas 7 years ago.

My previous post announced the news of the arrival of Qjori's first son, a lovely solid black male. Unfortunately he developed a serious case of diarrhoea and was rushed to the vets in Salisbury. Sadly he died in front of me whilst three vets tried to get a line into him. I have never seen diarrhoea like it, it was like milk. It came on so quickly and he went down so quickly we just didn't know what had hit us.

Prior to that as previously mentioned, last Monday Priscilla had given birth to a super looking solid dark brown boy. Qjori's third son. We named him Tendulkar. When I say 'given birth' I am perhaps misleading you. In appalling weather Priscilla had a very traumatic vet assisted birth and lost a lot of blood. At one point I thought we were going to lose her.
Initially very strong Tendulkar soon went down rapidly and was taken to the vets with pneumonia. He recovered well from the pneumonia but whilst at the vets developed the same milk like diarrhoea. He was there, bright as a button at the vets when the little black boy (Tanglefoot) died.

To cut a long and bloody awful story short it was a battle to cope with Tendulkar's condition and despite being at the vet's being cared for by two vets he was put to sleep at my request on Sunday afternoon. There was nothing else that could be done for him.

So three births, three Qjori sons, all super looking solid coloured boys. All dead.

We have thought of little else over the past few days and to be honest we are still devastated by what has happened. I know that worse things have happened to others and I know that we may get worse things happen to us in the future but right now it feels a little bit like the walls are coming down around us.