dimanche 20 juin 2010

New llama - Carabar Lily


This is Carabar Lily, a new arrival on our little farm.  Her name Carabar is the name of a witch in France, so we have named her Lily.  She has settled in with our old male, castrated llama, Larry, in fact she is now the dominant llama in the pen, but no aggression.

Unfortunately Carabar Lily has produced two handicapped crias (llama baby), so the owners asked me to home her while they had an entire male llama visiting their other females, to ensure she did not become pregnant.  I am happy to say that she may stay permanently with us.  We already love her and she eats from my hand.  Female llamas are known to be harder than males to train, but when things have calmed down here after the summer run of tourists and visitors, I will get down to some serious training with her.

Llamas are often used to 'guard' herds of sheep against dogs, wolves and cougars (not many of them i the Corbieres I am glad to say!!). They need to have some training to do this efficiently but they do seem to have some natural instinct.  Carabar Lily is already very possessive about the chickens.  The coop is in the llamas pen and when I let the chooks out to free range every afternoon, Carabar Lily hums her little warning noise when they go out of her sight, and when they come back to roost at dusk she often 'herds' them into the coop by touching her nose on their tails - this is very endearing.

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