Tuesday, June 15, 2010

Bare, naked llamas


Llama shearing time has come and gone again for another season. Thank heavens. I look forward to llama shearing as much as my annual OB/GYN exam!

We shear llamas in May. With busy schedules, it takes most of our spare time for the entire month. We've sheared before in April, but we tend to have one last cold snap in April. In years past, I've felt terribly guilty seeing shivering bare, naked llamas in the pasture.

Once you shear a llama you get a pretty good idea of how it's going to react to the process each year. This year was the first year we sheared this llama, and he was good as gold. But, it's not above - or below them - to surprise you with behavior the polar opposite of a previous year.

Last year was a good example. Our tallest female decided that after watching all of her barn mates get sheared in a restraining chute, whether they needed to be restrained or not, she was not having any part of it.

The 300-pound plus darling locked her legs outside the chute and forced us into a conversation that went like this:

"Sharon, we've got to get her to go in the chute."

"Mark, she weighs 350 pounds. It's not like we can lift her up and put her in it."

"Well, push her."

So as I pushed, he pulled, but she refused to budge.

"We're going to shear her right here," I said. Mark looked at me like I'd lost my mind, and considering that she was our eighth llama I might have been close to it.

We spread an old sheet under her. I got a bucket of feed and held it under her face while Mark proceeded to shear. She stood perfectly still and snacked the entire time. She was even polite enough to turn around at the appropriate time for Mark to shear the other side.

That was her routine again this year. Amazing. It would be nice if they were all so accommodating. But there has to be one that lifts the restraining chute completely off the concrete floor. This year, after leaving him half sheared for a few days, we got a sedative from the vet to make the process easier on all of us. We conned Darry, a cycling buddy and real-life medical professional, into being our llamas' personal nurse. The previous attempt at shearing this llama had been so stressful, I contemplated taking the sedative myself but decided the llama probably needed it more. The second half of that shearing went much more smoothly, with just the ever-so-slightest bit of swaying and drooling.

The last problem child also got a sedative. We didn't expect him to be such a light weight. He went down in the grass between the pasture and the basement where we shear. While Darry monitored his vital signs, I called the vet for reassurance that he was going to be OK.

Once she had convinced me that he'd come around sooner rather than later, we rolled him around in the grass and sheared him as best we could. He looks like we sheared him with a weed eater.

So there you have it. The sheer joy of shearing llamas. And, no, I'm not even willing to post a photo of the weed-eater shearing job.

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