The Birth! (in images)

Labor Delivery Imprinting On her feet (this page)

Denali rests a moment between attempts to stand. She's been falling all over the place, head first, sideways, backwards. The impact of hitting the ground (well bedded at least), helps dispel the amniotic fluid from her lungs, so I don't get too worried by all of her tumbling.

She has mighty long legs to figure out, and they sure aren't easy!

Another tumble! There must have been dozens of those, but in this one, she is looking particularly spider like.

She only rests briefly between attempts. At one point, I jump in and hold her down a while, during which I desensitize the other side of her body. She's strong and slippery, so I let her continue on her standing attempts.

In all, it took her about half an hour (excluding the time I physically keep her on the ground) of tumbling around and barely standing before she finally masters the art that is coordinating her legs.

And THERE! She's looking a lot like Bambi, but she seems to have the idea of balance and gravity under her control, for the moment. Mom watches Denali's attempts, licking her when she can.

Look at those legs! Without them, she'd be a teeny little thing.

With barely an idea of what is going on, Denali is comforted by her mom. I think Dot is comforting herself as well. It is good to see her baby on her feet.

Denali staggers around for a while before she actually gains control of her legs and can walk/stumble in the direction she wants.

I stand near the door so that she doesn't fall out of the stall, or against the door and it's nobby bumps and lumps. At least the rest of the stall is smooth and well bedded.

During most of this, Denali is making suckling motions with her mouth. Her instincts are quite strong!

She is still quite wet, as can be seen in this photo, but between mom's lickings and the air, she starts to dry off in an hour or so. Fortunately, the night is warmer than most these past weeks at 55 F and there's no cold breeze through the barn.

Eventually, Denali figured out her bearings enough to start searching mom for an udder, which she found pretty quickly. The rest of these photos are of Dot and Denali as they start to create their mother-daughter relationship.