Llamas Information

Archive for the ‘Living With Llamas’ Category

There were tail movements which accompanied the ear activities. A tail just hanging down was normal. If a llama felt the need for self-assertion, the tail would go up. The further up, the more aggressive the stance was becoming–until a curious reversal occurred. If the llama flipped his tail all the way over, so that […]

We were looking for another female or two. It would take a number of years to develop a line of small llamas, if we could do it at all; we were eager to try. Much as we loved Posey, she wasn’t tiny. Her lovely looks and long wool would be assets in our herd, though. […]

We continued through the grounds, passing a gazebo and going through a gate that brought us out to the back lawn. There was our van, with Cider looking out the window. In the door stood a chow, its blue tongue showing as it barked at Cider. Ken quieted the dog and invited us in for […]

I liked Whiskers. “You’re a real charmer,” I said to him. Whiskers was listening to me. I felt more like the job applicant than like the employer. “If you come live with us we’ll take you hiking. You’ll live with a couple of other males, and next year you can breed Posey. Did you ever […]

Whiskers went willingly into our van, and we drove back to Safley’s. Ken was out, and Marge let us take our time. We looked at the small female’s parents and the two grandparents that were there. Kelly was ready to buy her, but I still needed to think more. I sat for a while by […]

On a chilly afternoon late in the fall, we staked out the three males on the slope below the females’ field. There was much clucking and tail movement as we tied them up, but soon the males ignored Posey and Lil Bit. They settled down to the serious business of eating. Kelly went off to […]

Then she was above me, at the top of the ridge. Suddenly she took off and ran, a beautiful frisky run, all the way down the slope to the other llamas. I galloped after her, with perhaps a little less grace. She sniffed noses with Lil Bit, who was still tied up, and browsed near […]

I saw less of the llamas, and I missed them. Most of my attention was on work in town. One evening, I was teaching a class in self-hypnosis for writing. The students were sitting with eyes shut, absorbed in the task I had given them, of allowing a symbol to arise from the inner mind. […]

One wintry day, our veterinarian came out on a farm call. The llamas were due for worming and inoculating. We had meant to do it in the fall, but kept putting it off until we decided whether to geld Levi. Gelding was said to make a male llama more tractable, and since large Levi didn’t […]

We had started saying, “We’re llama breeders,” when we acquired our first female. Now it was time to actually do some breeding. We waited until early May to breed so the baby would be born in warm weather the following year. We hadn’t seen any breeding or any births, so it was all rather abstract. […]

That night Posey and Whiskers slept at opposite ends of the pasture. Every time we looked the next day, they were apart. Gradually the distance between them decreased until they were only ten or twenty feet apart. After a couple of days of nothing happening, we took Whiskers back home. We remembered hearing that you […]

We weren’t sure if one breeding would have settled Posey, so we tried again. Posey sat down for Whiskers without our help. But she didn’t lift her tail. We tried to lift it. Whiskers seemed frustrated: he kept getting off Posey, then back on. Sometimes he mounted her backwards and sat down on her shoulders. […]

I thought eleven and a half months was a long time to wait for anything, but that was approximately how long Posey would be pregnant. Since we didn’t know the date of the effective breeding, the waiting period could be over a year from that first Mothers’ Day attempt. Lil Bit hadn’t gotten pregnant yet. […]

Late in April Kelly saw Posey’s belly heaving. “The baby must be dancing in there,” he reported to me. Sometimes I crawled around in Posey’s pasture, trying to see her teats. Posey looked at me, turning so she could watch what I was doing. That made it impossible for me to see her teats. Even […]

The baby was dangling half-way out of Posey’s rear. I suddenly understood the expression llama breeders use for birth, “hitting the ground.” Most llama births occurred with the mother standing, and the baby would indeed hit the ground. But Posey sat down–on the baby’s neck. Kelly moved the long neck out from under Posey’s back […]