Misty
Posted: January 26th, 2007 by Lisa
Oh, Misty! She’s such a good girl. When we first got her, she loved to go for a walk, but now that she’s bonded with the sheep so much, she really frets too much when we’re away, so I don’t take her out very often. Sometimes she can just enjoy the walk, but I don’t like to stress her at all. I miss it, though. She doesn’t like to be handled much, but when we walk, she keeps right at my side, and will sometimes lay her head on my shoulder for a nuzzle. I can reach up and scratch under her chin, but only then. If I look at her, she pops her head right back up and pretends she didn’t do it. We play that silly game over and over. Snuggle time. It’s really cute.
She is such a sweetheart, which is exactly what I wanted in a llama. We originally started looking at llamas as guard animals for the flock of sheep. We have coyotes and wolves on our land, and llamas are known for being able to protect their flock from canines. Mostly, they are very curious, and rush over to anything that approaches their territory. If you are a fox or a coyote and you’ve got this huge animal coming right at you, you are most likely going to go somewhere else. I’ve seen Misty go rushing over because a rabbit was near the fence.
We also wanted to be able to go into the woods, and pack with them. Very often, when we forage for mushrooms, we will find a crop to harvest that is bigger than we can carry back ourselves. I thought it would be great to be able to load up a llama’s packs with black trumpet mushrooms, so that we wouldn’t lose them. We always mean to go back and get more, but that rarely actually happens. With black trumpet mushrooms, they are perfect for such a short period of time that we lose a lot of them every year.
We visited quite a number of llama breeders, and when you are looking for a llama to use as a guard animal, everyone told us that we didn’t want one who was people friendly at all. Gelded males were most often suggested, and they weren’t approachable or tamed at all. I just didn’t like that. I don’t want animals with that temperament on my farm, to be honest. Spitting llamas are not fun to be around. We did find one place that had great, friendly llamas, but they were really expensive because they were all registered and gorgeous, with fleeces that didn’t have guard hair and stuff like that. Their $2K price tag put them out of our ball park. While we were there, we saw a cria being born. It was great, and maybe I’ll take my girls to be bred there someday.
We found a place (Papa Smurf’s Farm) in a town right next to our’s (Stoddard), who has sort of a petting zoo type place. A woman had just give him her entire flock of llamas, about six or seven sisters, actually. The older ones had all been halter trained, and they were all very sweet. We took the youngest two. We didn’t mind at all that they weren’t registered.
Misty is something else. When we first got them, I put them in one of the winter pens with the rams, which none of them were very happy about at first. I made the stupid mistake of climbing over the gate one day, and Misty followed me over. (oops!) So that’s how you get out! She can (and does) get out of almost any place that we put her. She won’t leave her sister or the sheep, though, so hangs out around the area, and goes back in. Well, a couple of times at the Quinn’s, she did go visit the horses across the street. (Sorry!)
She’s a very friendly, curious girl, and I just adore her. Can you tell? As much as I say that everyone on this farm gets put to work, mostly we keep the llamas to stand around and look pretty. I find them delightful. Misty is four years old now, and I’m thinking that I might have her bred this summer. The cuteness of a cria is almost criminal.
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