My Buddy Larry the Llama

I am Larry's mom, Jill. We all live on a very small farm, a homestead really, about an acre. In addition to Larry we have chickens, rabbits, dogs, cats, geese, ducks, cows and lots of goats. Before learning to live in the country, I lived in cities all over the world. When I was fourteen, living in Southern California, while hiking in the mountains with my family I would day dream about living in the country and having lots of animals. It wouldn't be until I was forty-five before I could realize that dream.

Now we milk goats, raise most of our own food, make soap and bread, home school and play with our animals. It is a wonderful life, I have been truly blessed.

This is a picture of four of my five children and me on top of the world, okay so it is just up the hill, but it feels like the top of the world from where the picture was taken.

Because we live in the country, there aren't that many people in the community that we live in. Which means that everybody knows someone you know. We don't even have to give our address to people trying to find our house, we just tell them we live at the house with the green school bus in the front yard.

Since we live in such a small community, when one of my friends told me that one of her friends had some llamas he was trying to place, I immediately volunteered to take one. No better price than free in my book. Larry had been living over at another small farm close by. Because he is a year old and male, one of the other, older males, was fighting with him. Larry had been separated into the steer and horse area for his protection. When we went to pick him up he was already used to living with other kinds of critters.

Not that I know anything about llamas when I volunteered to take him mind you, that is just how I am though. Get the animal, learn about them later. This approach has worked out well for me in the past and I am learning a lot about llamas in the process.

Larry was named by my husband. My husband is a long haul truck driver who likes to back pack. When we got Larry we had told my husband that Larry would be his Christmas present. My son, Jack, who is all boy and doesn't take kindly to girly stuff, was wrestling (his form of showing affection to his father) with his dad one day. His dad said, "you better be good or I'm going to give you a fluffy pink bunny for Christmas." Jack says, not missing a beat, "that's okay because we're going to give you a big, fat, llama for Christmas." Llamas like to wrestle too, maybe that's why Jack likes him. Not that Jack and Larry wrestle.

So Larry became my husband's llama. Theoretically, he will take Larry back packing. First I have to get him trained, as my husband is not really farmer material. He is more of a city boy that tolerates my eccentricities because he loves me.
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Llamas are thought to have originated on the central plains of North America (personally I believe God created them on the sixth day) and migrated to South America several million years ago. They are beginning to make a come back in the US and Canada due to people importing them.

Llamas are known as Camelids. Llamas are related to camels and alpacas. They are in between camels and alpacas in size averaging about six feet tall and between 200 and 450 pounds when full grown. Big and shaggy these loveable creature can carry an amazing amount of weight up to 30% of their body weight. In South America llamas are often used as pack animals. They are sure footed and can go for quite awhile without water, like camels.

Baby llamas are called crias. The gestation period for a llama is long, well long by my standards, it is twelve months. One full year, can you imagine? Llamas are very social animals preferring to live in herds rather than alone during their twenty to thirty year life span.

People keep llamas for a variety of reasons:

To show and promote good breeding of the species
To harvest their wool
To use to pull carts
To use for back packing
To guard their flocks
To keep as pets to love on

Llamas are gentle loving creatures that are bright. They can be trained to do a variety of tasks. They also will respect your fences, a trait I am hoping Larry will teach my goats as they like to think of my fences as a suggestion of boundaries rather than a defined boundary.

Llamas communicate! Not being very vocal, they talk with their ears. Forward means "I'm curious or interested", Straight up "all's good", back "I'm not happy Bob", straight back ears on their back "I'm gonna spit at you if you don't stop". Just so you know next time you go to talk to your pal the llama.

If you are going to keep llamas as pets you should neuter the males, like you would a dog or cat. It isn't fair to them to keep them intact if you do not plan to breed them. You also should not just breed a llama willy nilly. Because they are big animals, not too dissimilar to horses, it is becoming an increasing problem where llama owners are abandoning their llamas, or not caring for them properly. So if you are thinking about a llama, don't do what I did, research them first and make sure that you have the ability and time to keep llamas.Buy This Poster of a Baby Llama at Allposters.com

Mostly I like to talk to Larry. He is a good listener. We have managed to get a lead on him so that I can catch him to pet him. Larry needs to learn to be led around so that we can hook him up to a cart this summer and go for rides. That is our ultimate goal. That and taking him backpacking.

Larry is totally fun to watch with the baby goats too. He is so patient with them. They like to climb on his back while he is laying down and play king of the mountain. I have to admit sometimes Larry scares me, if I am trying to catch the baby goats he gives me the "I'm going to charge you" look, though I am not sure he would. If I reach my hand out to pet him or encourage him to come to me he backs away. Hence the tag leery Larry.

Llama, Cuzco,...

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While researching this article I can across a funny story about llama wrestling. Seems that llamas like to wrestle with each other. They will push on each other's necks trying to get one or the other to go to the ground. In an effort to get the opponent to buckle, one llama will bite at the knee of the other llama. The opponent will then go down and the one left standing is declared the winner.

Every so often, while llamas are guarding sheep they will get bumped by a sheep in the knee. The llama thinking that the sheep wants to wrestle will bite the sheep in the knee to get it to go down so that the llama can be victorious (at least in his own mind). When this happens the sheep generally just stands there wondering why the llama bit it in the knee.

This might not be as funny to you as it is to me, but the idea of a sheep standing there looking at a llama that just bit him in the knee for no apparent, at least to the sheep, reason, just tickles my funny bone something awful. Sheep not being the brightest of God's creatures and all. When you think about it, being referred to as a sheep is not a compliment, ask any farmer around.

You can read about this over here You will also notice that the picture is from Mountain Lehman Llamas and is of their llamas wrestling