Buying Llamas

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.

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.

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.

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!