Because I have officially lost my mind and am thinking of getting some. Mostly just to bask in the llama drama-y goodness, and potentially the aim of someday harvesting fiber. I realized that while I’ve taken care of herds of other animals with a singular llama guardian – I’ve never dealt with multiples.
Anyone have more than one llama? Tips?
Don’t have them, but if you get them send me all the details as I kinda want 2-3 of them.
We have two! My husband “wanted” a camel but settled for llamas. He networked through GALA (Greater Appalachian Llama & Alpaca Assoc.) and found two 7yo girls who had been used for a while for packing in the Rockies, so they had that training. He hiked with them frequently for a year (day hikes near our home in New Hampshire) until he got a horse; now they spend most of their time in pasture but do the occasional llama hike and tote tools on workdays for the local trail club. They are also annual stars of the llama barn at the Fryeburg (ME) Fair.
They are pretty easy to take care of. They’ve stayed healthy on Poulin maintenance llama feed & llama minerals, and hay or pasture. My husband gives them sub-q dectomax injections every six weeks to prevent meningeal worm, and trims their toenails while he has them in. They get spot-on (Proforce 50/Equispot) on the same schedule as the horses but at half the dose to help fight ticks. And I think that’s about it.
Oh, and annual shearing, of course. Kate has an AmericanIzed fiber coat, like a giant alpaca. Nikki has the traditional llama coat, which is 2-layered, with a fluffy undercoat and coarse straight guard hairs. My husband had thoughts of learning to spin and did learn to knit, but between riding and getting involved in some local solar/green energy groups finds he has no time. I think he ended up giving away the accumulated fiber from Kate’s shearings, and is looking for someone interested in Nikki‘s, which is not so good for spinning but I understand would work well for felting.
Very few people have been able to train their llamas to let them walk up to them to catch them, and we are no exception, so their run-in shelter is in a small catch pen, and they are fed in there. Close them in while they are eating, or resting in there, and they know the jig is up and will let you halter them. Otherwise they are curious and happy to be near you but don’t want hands on. Most of their fencing is 4 foot tall, 4 strand electric rope (but if we let them into the horse area which has two strand, 40” tall electric rope they respect it); we use corral panels for much of the catch pen. When we bring them in the barn to hold them for any reason, the two fit together in one horse stall.
Nikki and Kate in their newly completed winter shed last November, in their hunting season hi-viz finery. We did end up buying one more corral panel to bump one side of the pen out a bit.
Complete with a bit of llama spit toward the left above the opening! They rarely spit at people (though they will spit in the air if they are not happy with how you are handling them), but they do seem to spit at each other a whole lot! 
I love llamas and all camelids! I’ve never owned any, but I had a job where I cared for a lot of llamas, alpaca, and the occasional camel. Llamas were definitely my favorite.
I bred and raised llamas for 15 yrs. They should not be super friendly, and if they are- it often becomes dangerous because of something called berserker syndrome. So please be careful to not choose an “in your face”” llama.
They do require monthly deworming to prevent meningeal worm(which is catastrophic), but otherwise they are very easy to keep. Finding a vet can be a challenge.
I do not recommend running llamas with large hoofed livestock because they cannot fight back or run away fast enough from a horse or to save themselves. I have seen and heard some real sad stories.
@avjudge – Thank you! What you said about the wool is one of the things I was wondering about – i.e., if certain bloodlines possessed different characteristics to their fleece. I’m a fairly decent knitter and plan to teach myself to spin soon.
@rememberthenight – That’s extremely interesting about berserker syndrome!
There are many different fiber types of llamas. There is the “classic” which often can often grows very little 2-3” of fiber on the neck, short leg hair and short body hair that may shed naturally. They are closest to wild guanacos. This term is starting to go out.
The light wool llamas still need to be shorn, but are “light wool” so it isn’t as much.
Then heavy wool is the abundant hair that can grow 6-8”+ a year- particularly intact males.
Medium is somewhere in between.
If you want to do something with the fiber- you will want a medium or heavy wooled llama, but be aware it takes A LOT of weekly brushing to keep the fiber workable. Never bed on shavings or hay, or you will loose the entire year of fiber overnight.
Llamas are trainable- but train a bit like cats… or donkeys. When and how they wish and if they shut down- you are DONE. They need time to think a request through and they evaluate if they will be kept safe and happy with each step. They do not tolerate being bullied- which is why are not super popular as a pack animal in comparison to a donkey or mule.
But once they trust you to make good decisions, they will tolerate mistakes.
A coworker years ago had Llamas at one time, but switched to Alpacas and liked them more. Once a year a shearing crew came through and sheared them, and the wool was very valuable. When she moved from Colorado to Washington, they took the Alpacas with them in a regular horse trailer, and it all went very smoothly. I bet the Alpacas liked the weather better in Washington, than the snow we had in Colorado sometimes. Certainly easier to keep animals without the huge snowfalls in Colorado about the time.
Every lama person I know uses cats as the analog to llama behavior! What I have read about donkeys sounds like that’s a good comparison, too. Definitely more independent than horses, less willing to take a leader’s word for it.
Like @JanM’s friend, we just used our two-horse slant/stock trailer to bring our llamas home from Wisconsin. They split their time between kushing and standing so they could look out through the slats. When we stopped for the night, we just left them in and they were fine. We did stop mid day in a few parks (once along the Erie canal) to take a walk and stretch our legs (all 12 of them).
Nikki’s classic coat is better for a pack animal, as the guard hairs shed water, but if you (OP) want fiber then you will want a fiber llama, which I believe is more common in the US these days.
(And wow, 6”+ in a year? Kate doesn’t grow anywhere near that, so I guess she qualifies as medium!)
Trailer cam, 2018
Temperament wise what is the difference between a llama and an alpaca?
I found an article about the comparison of Llamas and Alpacas.
Llamas are generally way easier to get along with than alpacas. Alpaca breeding has been much more focused on fiber and other conformation type show ring qualities that have not improved their general disposition or health at all. Llama fiber is not as desirable and also is just not as trendy as alpaca fiber or their expensive pyramid scheme type investment sales boom that ran in the late 1990’s thru 2000-2010. It has basically bottomed out and while it has not totally crashed, and there are some good quality fiber breeders out there now, there is just a ton of total garbage quality alpacas out there now too. Good luck trying to navigate that world.
Unfortunately, the US llama market is so totally underdeveloped that finding good quality animals, especially fiber llamas, will be a bit difficult to source and the planned purchase of ones you want won’t necessarily be locally convenient to you. So plan on researching breeders and knowing that you will likely have to commit to long distance type hauling to get quality animals. If that is even important to you. Otherwise, you can take your chances on the semi feral cattle guardian type llamas that farmers dump on craigslist when they realize they are totally unhandled, usually cranky, sometimes even kill calves and other small animals like dogs, etc, and even the nice ones need to be sheared annually. Usually they post them on craigslist a couple years AFTER they got them and they are feral with really bad feet and dangerously overgrown/matted fiber coats that hasn’t been sheared in at least 2 years or more. Sad but true statement. You can luck out and get some nice pet type llamas that will turn up on craigslist, too, but be careful. Work with a llama rescue for pet type llamas, if you can, as generally these groups are pretty experienced and can help you select the kind of pet llamas that will work well for you as a newbie. Many groups out there, though. As always some are great, others are not. Also, llamas can be surprisingly BIG tall and powerful animals. Some are 250-350lbs, which is actually big enough to be intimidating at times, but some mature animals run into the 400-500 range and are high headed beasts with a stone cold stare. Just sayin…
Thank you for the great info! I have wondered about the differences between them and you post kind of confirms my thoughts on just enjoying them from afar
Alpacas are like the goldendoodles of the camelid world…
Cute and fluffy, billed as the ultimate family pet, but often totally neurotic with a boatload of health issues. And generally WAY overpriced.
I love alpacas, too, but llamas tend to be more levelheaded and useful.
I don’t know about llamas and alpacas, but I know about sheep. Sheep are awesome. If you get a friendly breed, such as Dorpers, they can be quite endearing. There are some that make excellent fiber, if that is your goal. If you have experience with goats, there are similarities, but also critical differences. You can think of goats as optimists and sheep as pessimists. 
Copper can be toxic to sheep. Cattle and horse feed can have toxic levels of copper since those species are not sensitive to copper, like sheep are. Any feed you buy for your sheep needs to be labeled for sheep. If it isn’t labeled for sheep, it might hurt them.
The biggest challenge with sheep is keeping them healthy. They aren’t as resilient if they get sick (hence the pessimist joke). Vaccine twice per year and deworm as needed. Learn the FAMACHA scale to check their eye mucus membranes for indications of parasite infection. Be there for every lambing and have all the proper equipment to help. With sheep, more than with cattle, you need to make sure you, and the environment, is extremely clean if you have to assist a ewe with lambing.
I call them a cross between a cat and a horse. We have three currently. Have had five altogether. They are very easy to deal with. Pretty much self-care. I find them to be reasonable creatures. Four of the five of ours have been Argentine llamas.
We use them as guardians for our flock of Icelandic sheep. These are two of them the day we brought them home: Julio and Bunny
OMG, I love them!
And what do your sheep look like, @eightpondfarm? Can we have sheep pics? Please?!?
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