I imagine that a lot of us have middle aged or even elderly female alpacas in our fields that give birth to healthy cria every year without fuss or bother. Not the most beautiful of girls but they are absolute professionals at producing healthy offspring.

In the summer of 2004 one of my original Chilean females, Georgina , gave a textbook demonstration of how a cria should be born and, luckily, I had my camera with me. She knows me very well and wasn't at all bothered by my presence, but it's worth remembering that some females could find a photographer dodging around for the best shots, rather stressful.

The following pictures show the whole event - from the appearance of a slight bulge to the cria feeding and disposal of the afterbirth. I've put them on the website mostly for the benefit of new alpaca owners who may never have seen a birth. If all our alpacas gave birth like this, summer would be far less stressful. The whole sequence took one hour and fifteen minutes - well, I said she was a professional!

Here is a link to a much smaller downloadable file of the sequence for you to save/print. Birth PDF