Llama spa day

The following post was actually written on Sunday, June 8, and I only needed to add photos and video, but on Tuesday morning, June 10, I slipped and fell on the tile floor in our bathroom, on my already injured knee, of course. So I lost whatever progress I'd made over the last few weeks and am back to doing nothing outside. Let's just end this part of the post by saying that my orthopedic surgeon is getting to know me really well.

Sitara and Tinker after shearing.

Sunday, June 8 did not start out very well. At 9:00 Mike walked in and said that Katy (the person not the llama) just told him that the llama shearer was coming today. Oops! Yeah, I had forgotten to tell him, but I said not to worry because he wasn't supposed to be here until 10:00. And then I looked out the window and saw a pickup truck and trailer driving very slowly in front of our house. "I hope that's not him," I said, half joking. Guess what! It was him!

Luckily, Oscar the yearling llama is close to the house and very easy to catch, so Mike grabbed him while the shearer was setting up. Before the shearer was done with him, Mike brought up Merlin the llama that guards the sheep. And then things got complicated.

Catching the last three was not easy, so the shearer volunteered to help. Mike, Katy, Kat, the shearer, and his assistant went into the pasture. (I didn't help because I'd had gall bladder surgery 12 days earlier and was not supposed to be lifting anything heavier than ten pounds.) When Tinker the yearling female got fairly close to Mike, he lunged and wrapped his arms around her neck. He was not expecting her mother Sitara to go into full-on llama attack guard mode! Everyone watching says that Mike sustained a few good mama llama kicks before he had his other arm wrapped around her neck, and then the shearer ran up and got the halter and lead rope on mama Sitara. Mike wound up with llama spit on him from mama, but he doesn't have any real injuries from the ordeal.

Sitara sounded the alarm the moment that Mike grabbed her baby, and she never stopped until the two of them were in a stall together. That means she screamed the entire time she was being sheared, even though we were holding her daughter right there next to her. And she continued screaming while we were shearing her daughter. She quieted down once we put the two of them in a stall, but a few minutes later, Kat walked past, and Sitara let out a good scream. And because words simply cannot do justice when describing a llama scream, I took a few seconds of video for you ...

Catching Dolce was pretty easy because he hates Merlin, so Mike's brilliant idea was to take Merlin into the pasture neighboring Dolce's, and Dolce immediately came running up to the gate. Kat was leading Merlin and started to back away because she could hear Merlin regurgitating and getting read to start spitting at Dolce.

Katy, who has only been on the farm for a couple of weeks, said that the llamas were "really scary." Yep, that's why we have them! They are here to guard the sheep and goats from coyotes, and they are extremely good at their jobs.

After shearing Merlin was returned to the sheep pasture, Oscar was returned to the side yard, and Dolce was returned to the back 20. Sitara was put in the pasture with Dolce for breeding, and her daughter was kept in the barn so that we can work with her, training her to lead.