Shearing Llamas

All spring I was dreading the thought of shearing day for the llamas.  Last year at shearing time our lady llama was pregnant, which changed her whole personality.  Where in previous years, she stood nice and quiet and let us shear her without any problem whatsoever, last year was entirely different.

Yes, she was a screaming, kicking, spitting demon!  I put a little video of her misbehaving online, but it just doesn’t do justice to the continual fits she had while we tried to shear her.  If you’ve never had a llama spit the contents of their stomach on you, well, you just can’t truly appreciate what a stinking, nasty  mess it is.

Fortunately, this year she was no longer pregnant and was back to her normal, sweet self.  Moral of the story?  Do NOT, absolutely do NOT shear her again while she’s pregnant!

The Farmer did the most of the shearing.

Keira stool patiently while he worked away.  It sure made things a lot easier, and most of the time Geek and I were just superfluous.

Samson was a little less than thrilled to be sheared, but for the most part he stood still.  At least until we tried to shear his belly and hind legs.  I think he figured we were getting too near his male equipment for comfort, ha!

Still, we got the job done.  The worst part was trimming their toenails.  Neither one of them liked that.  Can’t say that I blame them, as we have yet to come up with a good method of doing it.

Here’s Samson after the deed was done.  He’s a little ragged around the edges, but you can’t see it very well since he’s kushed down.

Llady Llama Keira turned out pretty well, however.  Since we did her first, thinking to get the worst over with, she got to go out in the back pasture for the first time since she had her baby, while Samson had to stay penned up.

I plan on waiting a while before letting the two llamas back together.  I want to be sure Kiera has recuperated completely from having the stillborn cria, and besides, it’s better for a cria not be born in the heat of summer.

So Samson must continue to moan and groan about his bachelorhood for now.

So for now, the shearing is done for the year. But there’s one haircut left – Neffie. She won’t let anyone touch her but me, so some nice day we’re going to have get the job done.

THEN when I can say positively ALL the creatures are shorn for the year, ahhhh, that will be shear bliss.