Arrival

Being a relatively new llama owner, having three never-before-handled ‘babies’ was a little bit scary.

The ride out to Ohio and back was a bad drive. It was foggy and raining and snowing and windy – you name it, I pretty much drove through it. With just me and the truck, that’s fine, but pulling a trailer with live cargo – that was kind of stressful. When I finally got home with the Little Guys, it was dark out. I pretty much got them out to their field as quickly as I could and left them to settle in on their own, in the dark.

 

The next day, I was nervous about taking their halters off. The previous day was the first time they were haltered. They had been all haltered up before I got there, so I didn’t know how easy or hard a time the seller had with the Little Guys. To be clear, I wasn’t nervous about taking the halters off, but nervous about how hard it would be to get them back on later.

I know that when buying a llama, you are supposed to have the owner show you how they are handled, but the guy was honest in saying that they were never handled before, so I didn’t really have any expectations. I just made sure I saw them walk around so that I could see that they were sound and nothing physically wrong with them. (This is pretty much why I could afford these guys).

I also know that you are not supposed to leave the halters on when llamas are out in their field, so I knew I had to take them off. I was amazed at how relatively easy it was to approach them and get the halters off. I’m guessing that they were probably still unsure of their surroundings, so that probably helped.

Over the next few weeks, I worked a lot with the Little Guys. Olliver and Allbus were very jumpy and skittish. Merllin was very calm and laid back. Merllin let me put his halter on very easily after three or four tries. Now he even lets me walk up to him and halter him out in the field – as opposed to the others who only let me halter them in the catch pen. I wonder if the skittishness is a Surri thing, because none of the other Boys are like that…

At this point they can all be haltered with relatively little problem. Olliver has to do his little dance before he will stand still, but the dance is getting shorter as time goes on.