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Monday, July 26, 2010

Shearing Llamas

One of my favorite blogs is Whispering acres and Claire did a blog about how to shear a llama the "traditional (ie. South American) way".  You can view it HERE to get all the nitty gritty details that were useful to us.

We were THRILLED to find out that it works and is relatively easy once you get past the body slamming putting the halter thing on (this with Igraine, the tamest of the lot!  Pikachu was just fine).
It LOOKS bad.  In fact, a trussed up Llama looks a lot like a dead llama.

Mmamma Llamma Llilith looks on...she was rather concerned that we were taking her darling Igraine out of the barnyard and made all sorts of interesting llama noises but did refrain from spitting.

They look even more dead when you start removing fiber...a victim of a depredation (a fiber depredation!)

Igraine received plenty of loving...especially from her beloved Will.  She lay prone like this for a long time even after being released from the rope around her hindquarters.  Will is using a nubbly rubbery brush on her and she enjoyed that quite a bit!
Llillith defied capturing.  She is wily.  She witnessed both fiber depredations on Pikachu (background) and her wee Igraine.  She is going to be hard to catch unawares... Both girls received much needed pedicures as well!

3 comments:

  1. Wow! I am soooo pleased that it worked for you! It makes me feel a lot better about having posted those sad looking "dead llama" pictures of my Cabernet being sheared, but it's not as bad as it looks! I'm really happy to hear that Igraine was able to be sheared without injury to her, or to you! Thanks for posting about it - now more people will be able to benefit from this method! I did 2 more llamas yesterday like this, and my last 2 will probably be finished later this week. Now to skirt that fiber and get it processed! Yay!! (p.s. Added you to my blogroll)

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  2. Animals are a lot of work aren't they? Neat photos of the process. Some of my rabbits endure shearing much better than others who figet the entire time.

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  3. Amazing. I was amazed at all the fences etc and thought about all the work you folks do regularly.

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