The Winter Fizz

Our Canadian weather has mellowed considerably since Ping's grand entry in to this winter wonderland, but snow was still falling as Talluleh, SoDah's younger sister, made a surprise announcement that she too wanted to have a baby.

It is well known that llama's can conceal a pregnancy beneath their thick coats and the only indication is their determination to spit at the males. Some females spit at the males just for entertainment, but SoDah was most obviously carrying a baby, yet Talluleh, who is somewhat smaller, showed no outward signs of being pregnant.......until her waters broke.


In actual fact, we noticed her behaviour was different earlier in the day as she she stood poised over the bean piles for long periods without passing anything.

So on the 30th December, Firaza was unceremoniously dumped into the snow. Following our difficult experience with Pinguino, we wasted no time in whisking the little chap into the studio for a complete rub down and blow dry, ensuring his downy undercoat was completely dry and fluffy, before returning him to his mother.

By the time we re-united Firaza with Talluleh, she had passed the afterbirth and took him into the relative warmth of the deep straw stall to nurse him.

Weighing in at a hefty 32lbs, Firaza was as strong and spritely as Ping was quiet (I understand that the word 'Ping' means peaceful).

Firaza had to endure a bout of conjunctivitis, fairly common in crias. We treated this with a daily dose of homoeopathic pulsatilla and bathing the eyes with 'eyebright'. His eyes watered constantly and were obviously worse when he was brought into the warm studio for treatment and weighing each day.

He held his head high and his eyes partially closed as they flooded with stinging tears.

As with most of our animals, they quickly adopt nicknames and Fizz seemed like the most appropriate sobriquet.

I wonder what they call us?

The Many Hats of Ping

December may not be the best month for any animal to be born in the northern hemisphere, but in middle of a blizzard with windchill dragging the temperature down to a skin-cracking 28 C below zero, anything that survives is going to be tough!

In such circumstances did ‘Ping’ make her arrival into the cruel world.



Pinguino was not only born into an environment suitable for penguins, but she even dressed for the occasion in suitable woolly black jacket and white woolen shirt!

The tiny llama had only just hit the ground when she was spotted, but even so, she must have been exposed to the extreme weather conditions for at least half an hour. We rushed her into the deep-straw floored shelter and dragged the generator alongside to power a hairdryer hoping to dry her quickly. Even this couldn’t compete with the icy drafts cutting through the walls and she was once more wrapped in a blanket and whisked into our studio for drying in front of the wood stove.

Re-united with her mother back in the shelter, we anxiously waited for Ping to have her first and all important feed. In the meantime, cardboard and blankets were tacked up around the walls to prevent the cruel wind from sapping the young llama’s essential body heat.


Frostbite and Pneumonia



Ping made it through the night and seemed OK for a few days, but then her ears flopped and she started a disconcerting wheeze and chest rattle.

She was rapidly losing weight too, down around 4 pounds from her 29lb birth weight.

The Oldest Remedy in the Book - Urine

Hauled once more into the warm studio, Ping was provided with a large cardboard box, which she quickly decided was not suitable for living, but perfect for a toilet.

Llamas are incredibly easy to house-train, preferring to have one small area set aside for a toilet. As soon as she stepped through the little door made in the side of the box we could shove a bucket under her back end and catch all the produce ……or nearly all! Plenty of newspaper and a polythene under-sheet advisable!

At her first squatting, we swooped an old saucepan under her to catch the urine and added about 3cc of her urine to a bottle of milk. An old 330cl beer bottle is the ideal vessel for milk feeding (plastic bottles collapse under the phenomenal sucking power of a cria!). Lamb-feeding teats are readily available from feed stores and fit the beer bottles snuggly.

Getting a new-born llama to feed from a bottle is a trial of patience, but knowing that a baby animal usually needs darkness to start feeding, we invented a series of devices that pretended to be mummy! Sticking the bottle under an armpit with the teat barely showing started the ball rolling. Once Ping had pushed her face into the warmth and darkness of the sweater she was…..eventually, happy to feed. Later a couple of sticks taped to the corner of the cardboard box were used to support the sleeves of the same sweater. Poke the teat between the sleeves and feeding usually commenced after a minute of poking around.

Once Ping was used to the bottle feeding we only had to place a hand over her eyes and she would take a bottle.



Ping was urinating hourly and for the next six hours we would catch her urine and feed 2 or 3cc back into her bottle ready for the next feed. 2cc of ionic silver was also added to every other feed to support her weakened immune system.

Learn more about urine therapy

In less than 24 hours the snuffling, croaking, rattling breath and distress of the pneumonia had vanished and Ping was back on her feet and full of llama bounce!

We decided to make up a bed on the floor of the studio and spent the next 10 days sharing the room with Ping, attending to toilet and feeding at 2 or 3 hour intervals throughout the night. Each day she was taken back out to her mother for milk and bonding, but the bitterly cold weather continued, with temperatures in the region plummeting to -38 C. Ping spent most of her time indoors until she had regained her birth weight and was fighting fit.



Unfortunately, her ears didn’t fare as well as her lungs. The upper 4 inches of each ear was so badly frozen, that they never recovered. The ears cracked and bled and our repeated attempts to create hats and ear-warmers were not welcomed by her or the rest of the herd! So desperate was Ping to rid herself of the many fluffy, fleecy or woolly contrivances that she made her ears crack and bleed even more. Honey and vitamin-E oil eased the pain a little, but she refused to wear a hat. For reference though – the most successful hat was made from the leg of a nylon stocking stretched over the head, holding a pad of her mothers fibre over each ear. Un-sexy and zero street-cred, but definitely warm!