The Llama Diaries Finds a New Home

It's been a while since posting here, but the llamas have not been neglected in the meantime.  In fact so much has been happening that I haven't had time to post.

Firstly, The llamas have a new home in the milder climes of southern BC.

Secondly, they have finally launched their own business with a brand new website http://llamasintheraw.com

A new educational organisation has been established for all fibre artists called the Fibre Arts Bootcamp, which also has it's own website at http://fabinbc.com

A final piece of llama news is that Ping, who featured so much in this blog, produced an exact replica of herself in another rare genetic trait called pre-potency.  She always has to do something unusual!

Little Kazuko was a bit of a surprise.  She is the delightful product of a minor mistake in that 'someone' forgot to count all the girls in the field before shutting the gate and letting boys loose.  Oops!

Kazuko means 'child or daughter of peace'.  A very appropriate name since her mother's name means 'peace' or 'peaceful'.

The Many Woes of Ping

As if Ping hasn't been through enough trauma, she is now faced with her most difficult challenge yet.

Ping began limping, holding her front left leg off the ground. We couldn't find anything obviously wrong and presumed it to be a muscle strain, caused by a slip on the ice. She was dosed with Arnica 200x homeopathically and sent back to the herd.



A few days later the limp had not improved and on further examination a slight swelling in the humorous was found, indicating a possible hairline fracture. With no bone movement and obvious issues, the leg was splinted and stabilized.

Two days later the entire leg had swollen. She was duly plonked on the back seat of the pick-up and she endured the long trek into town to see the vet for an X-ray.

Not good. Further X-rays taken the following day revealed that she had apparently broken the leg some time ago and the break had not healed properly. Excessive bone deposits had sequestered the broken section and left the poor little Cria with bone necrosis and a very serious infection.

The prognosis from our friends at the College of veterinary medicine at the University of Saskatchewan was no better than zero. Neither surgery nor amputation would put Ping back on the rails.

She was prescribed heavy doses of antibiotics and anti-inflammatory drugs and we brought her home to work on her with the most powerful medicine of all - homeopathy. If Samuel Hahnemann can't bring her back then no-one can.

Ping is now on a closely monitored regime of calcarea phosphorica to remove the bone sequestration and bring the leg back into normality.



Needless to say, Ping spends a lot of time with the one Llama that knows about this kind of thing - Bella.

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!

Frostbitten Penguin

Winter here in central BC has been incredibly mild so far and despite several dumps of snow, nothing has stayed around for long and the grass has continued to grow and the Llamas continued to graze the cut oat field - that was, until Friday.

Friday trumpeted the arrival of winter with vicious winds blowing straight out of the Arctic, making minus 16 degrees C feel more like -27.

Fine powdery snow arrived horizontally, drifting around everything and hampering any attempt at movement.

.......and Sodah chose THIS day to bring into the world her first baby!

Of course, she couldn't have the baby in the cozy hay shed, Llamas prefer to be out in the open for such events. Luckily, the writhing wet mass was spotted within a minute of landing in the snow and was rushed into the haystall and wrapped in blankets and towels.

The spiteful wind found every chink in the woodwork and opening eyes in the blizzard was painful at times. Cardboard and blankets were quickly stapled to the walls and the generator dragged to the haystall to power a hair dryer to assist in fluffing up the coat.

The cold was so savage though, that even the hair dryer couldn't cope. Our little winter cria was then bundled up and rushed to our work studio to dry in front of the furnace.



After an hour of heavenly warmth and having learned the art of standing up, she had to be returned to the stall with her anxious mother for the all important colostrum feed.

The tempestuous weather continued the following day with the air temperature dropping to -25 C, so mother and cria remained confined and frequently monitored. Unfortunately, SoDah refused to allow her baby to feed on the second day and once more she was hauled indoors for a bottle feed as she appeared weak and was constantly shivering......hardly surprising really!

We are not great advocates of interference, but at this stage tube feeding had to be considered as the baby would not take a bottle. We gave Sodah one more attempt and THANKFULLY she allowed her baby to feed, perhaps due to the anxiety of absence.

Unfortunately, at some time during the proceedings, the cria's ears succumbed to frostbite and now hang limply. This is always a danger with newborns in winter here.

If only she had been born the day before, she could have enjoyed warmth, sunshine and grass. I have read that Llamas choose the best time and weather to give birth......but then again SoDah has always been the 'difficult teenager'!

....and the baby's name? Pinguino seemed appropriate - evenly marked black and white - our own little penguin!

Toe Nails

Toe nail trimming might seem like a minor event in the life of a Llama, but it happens to be one of the most difficult and traumatic experiences we have to deal with.

I have seen the videos where someone just casually lifts the foot of the animal and neatly trims the nail. That just doesn't seem to happen for me!

Throwing the animal seems like such a drastic thing to do just a clip a few nails and fully grown Llamas don't actually enjoy being thrown - if you know what I mean. I usually end up being the one that's thrown!

Does anyone have any tips on hassle free nail trimming?

Bella - Recovery Success

Bella has had a pretty rough ride through the summer and at one point it seemed she might not pull through. She became too sick to make the long journey to the vet clinic. Her knee swelled to the size of her head and numerous abscesses broke out around the entire joint. We suspected deep wound infection as she was not exhibiting signs of sepsis. A single dose of penicillin helped to bring her temperature down, but further doses of the same led to distressing reactions and we stopped treatment.

We turned instead to our normal bag of herbal and homeopathic medication and over a period of weeks she has made great progress.

The entire knee was covered in a hot comfrey poultice and changed morning and evening for 3 weeks. This treatment brought out a huge amount of pus from dozens of locations and a gradual reduction in the swelling.

Homeopathic Lachesis was also given and this improved her countenance and she has become much more mobile that enabled her to join the rest of the herd.

Homeopathic Hep sulph was given to try to clear up the remaining infection after the bulk of the abscesses healed. We have stopped the poultices except when a new raw bump appears and needs to be drawn out.

Bella walks well, allowing a little weight onto her bad leg at times and sharing her weight whilst standing. Cushing is no longer a problem, although standing up has become a more awkward process and she often has trouble rising from her front knees (her back end rises without trouble). Assuming this to be additional strain or weakness in the front legs we are giving her a daily dose of homeopathic Ruta.

She is still in pain at times and draws her knee into her flank for comfort. I can apply pressure on and around the knee with no reaction, but gentle touch is sometimes unbearable for her (a key homeopathic state).

We do not foresee any problems arising from the added strain on her other hind leg and her muscle is building once more on her bad leg. She can even run away from us when she feels like it! She still remains the sweetest natured and easiest Llama to handle from our entire herd. We have a couple of animals that I most certainly would not want to treat, as we have Bella!

Given personal experience with muscular injury, we understand the repair may take a year or more to take effect.

The knee is still grossly swollen though and until this reduces the orthotic brace cannot be fitted. In fact it is unlikely to be used as Bella does not try to rest on the sore leg when cushed.

Finally, it appears that the cold wind on her leg is causing her great pain (probably the metal work inside). We are making her a long legging from her own wool to keep her warm in the winter!:)

That’s it

A big thank you to all concerned for making this recovery possible – for the advice and concern over Bella.