[Roxy]

Inca and her cria are gorgeous!!

Robbie our llama is entire - he is just two.  He is very sociable with people and will go to the field wall to see them.  Yet he does not seem to like me, and if he has to wait for his food he has been known to spit.  Visitors do not believe that, he looks like butter would not melt when he has his adoring public bringing him bananas.

He is known locally as the banana llama!

[little blue]

     

[suzanne]

Hi,

My  husband is training the llamas for trekking, he has a beard and is now known locally as Osama Bin Llama!

Suzanne

[little blue]

Just frightened my dog by laughing out loud at that one!!   Sorry Sheba, llama related humour...

[CameronS]

They really are nice, mine (he's coming on friday) is the same colour are the babies brown patch with a little white patch somewhere, Rudy

[MiriMaran]

 ;Dvery good Suzanne

[Roxy]

The banana llama

[little blue]

What a handsome chap!  Love the brown swirl on his head. Are you still looking for a girlfriend for him?
Seen some llamas today, enjoying the brief spell of sunshine

[Canadian Sheepfarmer]

My llama has banana ears, in that they bend forward and are roughly banana sized and shaped. I was told that this makes a llama more valuable, I can believe it because others that I have seen with coarse shaped ears look less intelligent.

Lloyd is 6 foot 5, spits, kicks and bites, and faints when he is sheared.
He misses nothing, if a door slams in the house he hears it!

[Roxy]

Mine sounds like an angel then - as he only spits!!  His ears are definitely banana shaped!!  Robbie never misses anything either, I call him Mr Nosey .....if he hears a car on the lane, or even someone walking past talking, he goes over to have a look at whats happening.

Do you have a pic of Lloyd, would love to see him?

[Canadian Sheepfarmer]

Here is the Lloydster:

http://s393.photobucket.com/albums/pp16/Polleddorset/?action=view&current=cornergasandfullmoonllama007.jpg

hard at work guarding sheep. He probably thinks he is a sheep, albeit a very TOP SHEEP, in that he hasn't seen another llama since he was weaned.
You need just one for sheep. Any more and they bond with each other and do not protect the sheep as well. I have a Great Pyrr dog as well running with the flock 24/7  and they form a good team.

[Roxy]

Thanks for posting the pic.  What a handsome boy he is, and what a lovely colour. 

When you say you have your dog running with the sheep .....do you mean it lives in the field?

[Canadian Sheepfarmer]

The dog is the price of doing business Roxy. We get packs of coyotes and the odd wolf around the sheep. Livestock guardian dogs of specific breeds allow us to keep sheep at all. My Great Pyrenees weighs about 120 lbs, the average coyote is 35 lbs soaking wet so the coyotes respect him. You train a pup by taking him at 5 weeks old and rearing him with lambs. You do not pat him or make a fuss of him, just feed him. That way he bonds with the sheep not people, he recognises individual faces. You have to stop him from biting ears and playing with the lambs in a harmful way, with Grizzle, my dog, I eventually had him living with 8 rams, they soon taught him to respect sheep when he was feeling like a wrastling match!
It takes a long time to train them and 4 out of 10 just don't work out. They either kill sheep, run away to visit other dogs, or worst of all won't stay with the flock 24/7.

My friend has 800 ewes and 5 dogs living with the sheep in a more remote area, I get all of my sheep in every night so have managed so far with just one dog, I will start to train another one next year.

http://s393.photobucket.com/albums/pp16/Polleddorset/?action=view&current=livestockandwinterwheatbreakfastmee.jpg

[Roxy]

Great pic of your security team!!  And very interesting to read about your dog.  I do appreciate that you need to keep your sheep safe.  We worry about foxes and badgers, which seem nothing compared to coyotes and wolves!!   Although we do have a big fox problem, now the hunting ban is with us.  Robbie is a guard llama for the large free range flock of hens I have, and he does a good job. I have had him a year, and lost two hens, but they strayed off my land, and the fox got them.  So, on the whole he does a good job.

[The Relic]

anyone know where I could get my hands on two. living in the North of Ireland.