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Llamas make wonderful field pets and are generally less expensive to buy and more easily trained and biddable than alpacas. Llama husbandry is less demanding than keeping horses, sheep or goats and very rewarding.
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When choosing llamas to buy, it is sensible to give some thought to your own particular requirements before making your selection. If you want to "show" your llamas then conformation and quality of fleece will be very important, but you will also want to know that your llama will handle well and behave appropriately in the show ring.
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If you want pack llamas for trekking, a dependable temperament will be just as important as an even gait, especially if the llamas are likely to be regularly handled by strangers and members of the public as well as by their owner.
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Female llamas can be bred from as young as 2 years old provided they have grown on well. If you want to breed llamas, it makes sense to try and match a suitable stud llama with an appropriate dam and to avoid breeding from any llama with a genetic defect, or a history of birthing problems. If the dam and sire are both proven, it is obviously helpful to look at their offspring and does confirm their fertility.
If you are looking for a guard llama to mind your lambs, chickens or even your alpaca crias, it is important to choose a male of suitable temperament that is likely to be protective of your stock. The right personality for this job is not actually an aggressive character, more a caring and almost devoted one. Llamas are not aggressive by nature but they are herd animals with strong instincts for group preservation. When a llama sights potential danger, his first reaction is to alert the rest of the herd and all members then close ranks as a united team. In a small group of breeding females, it's very nice to observe that everyone is everybody elses auntie and fellow child-minder, which makes for a very chilled-out pastoral scene!
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A word on fleeces! Peoples taste in llamas vary greatly and everyone is entitled to their opinion! Very woolly llamas, sometimes described as Tampuli, Tapada and Lanuda are more unusual in this country and very characterful, especially when accompanied by top knots, fringes, bushy eyebrows and hairy ears. They look great! but unless you are prepared to groom the llama and keep the coat looking nice, they can soon become matted and unkempt, which doesn't look good at all! If you want to pack with your woolly llama you will have to shear at least the area where you want the pack to sit, so for practical reasons, you may want to opt for a Ccara llama. Some Ccara with very short fleeces shed so effectively that a thorough combing and regular grooming avoids the need to shear altogether. Most llamas however, Ccara or tapada, will need shearing at some point. If you don't shear, the wool will stop growing, but may become increasingly felted or matted. Bear in mind also that UK llamas are more likely to suffer with excess heat in summer than excess cold in winter. At Watertown Llamas we have some of each type and love them all!