Llama Feet and What Came After

Post date: Mar 31, 2016 3:56:36 PM

Now that we've had a bit of rain and warm weather, the forage is up, and it was time to turn the llamas and sheep out into the "back forty" (actually the back 100). We rotate the sheep around using electric fencing - supposed to help keep coyotes and dogs away from the sheep - and hopefully a guard llama, but the other llamas (the llamas we are not using as guard animals) are big enough that coyotes won't bother them. Before turning them out, a few of them needed their toenails trimmed. Llamas don't have hooves, rather a foot with two big toes, and each toe has a heavy nail on it. If they don't wear them down, which most of our llamas do, they need to be trimmed periodically. So we did this, one recent Saturday.

We were so busy doing it, that we did not have time to photograph or vid the process (the process takes two of us), but here are a couple photos of Nadine in the chute.

She really didn't seem to mind getting her feet trimmed, and was a very good sport about it at the time, but we haven't been able to catch her since to check up on her!

And after we finished, we turned them out. Of course we provide water for them, and they come and go. At times they settle themselves down in our driveway/road, and once Jim was trying to drive back in to the house, but a couple of llamas - that's Buck and Prieta in the two photos below - refused to move until he got out and shooed them out of his way. He (Jim) was highly amused by it all.

The other photos are somewhat random ones of the llamas hanging out in various locations.