Llama training day

Renata wasn't too impressed about the catch rope around her neck...

We had landscape designer and llama guru Jennie Curtis coming to help us with our llamas today. Jennie is experienced in the Camelidynamics gentle training methods and has been showing us some techniques for handling  our beasts.

When we first got our llamas, just over a year ago, most of them were quite wild. Since then, we've made friends with them and we can now pat them and carry out basic husbandry tasks.

... But we dream of lovely halter trained llamas who will come with us for shows and other PR events.

So we are building some catch pens and have been following Jennie's advice to make them feel more at ease. We must be doing something right as we've had some great improvements, and this year's crias are very friendly.

Unfortunately, as we discovered today, our unfinished pens are not good enough for the more hands-on training aspects of grown up llamas, such as halter training. So more pen building will happen soon... In the meantime, we'll focus on our crias and hopefully that'll get the others inspired too!

Little Valentine was a model student yesterday, letting Jennie halter him and looking gorgeous in it... We'll also need to buy a cria-sized halter!

Valentine getting is halter on

Lessons from the day: we need better pens, I need to relax and not get all worried at the slightest sign of stress from my llamas :)

Best part of the day: having seen how Jennie does it, we now feel more confident to have a go and find a training way that suits us and our llamas! Stay tuned to see how we go...