DO CAMELIDS HAVE MEMORIES?

I am continually amazed with the depths of intelligence, care, recognition and understanding of alpacas and llamas. Your questions as well as my personal experiences have brought some particularly interesting situations. I will be sharing these with you in this newsletter as well as future ones.

It came to my attention recently that a female llama born here on our farm 14 years ago and sold as a yearling, had fallen into hard times. The story was that her 2 nd owner had committed suicide a year or more ago. The llamas simply remained on the property. The property was subsequently rented to folks who had "no clue" about llamas. As such, they received no specific care and were fed bales of straw. In time, the area Humane Society was contacted, intervened and moved the llamas to their holding facility.

I became aware of the situation and as the original breeder, I felt strongly that I had a responsibility to step up and bring Meza, the female, back home. I did, however, have concerns. We have not bred any of our girls in nearly a decade. My focus is on education and my clinics and presentations take a great deal of time. As a result, the girls have "closed" their herd. There are no llamas coming and going for breeding. No babies have been born, no one has been sold and no new animals have been purchased. The girls are older now and have a very set routine. They have long established specific stations and have not been very accepting of any visiting llamas placed in their domain. This was a cause for concern. It is not unusual these days for a single llama placed in a "closed" herd to suffer. They are shooed away, kept from feed bins, isolated. they are treated as a total outsider who simply does not belong to this specific group.

In this instance, however, there was a twist in the story. Meza had been born here....

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