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Farm Friday, July 26th, 2024
Llamas on the run
You should never leave the gates open around our llamas.
We have two amazing llamas named Rheaa and Poppers. We brought them to the farm last year to guard the sheep after our previous llama, Precious passed away at almost 25 years old. Rheaa and Poppers were bonded at the farm they came from. Poppers, who is older, had been a foster mother to Rheaa.
Poppers is an aggressive eater and will push Rheaa out of the way to take her food if we let her. So we separate them for meal times. But they really want to be together, so when Rheaa finishes her food, she pushes against the gate to get back together with Poppers. It is sweet. If I ever walked in the barn and there was only one llama, I would be worried. So it is no surprise to me that when one llama escaped the enclosure, the other one joined in the fun.
It happened on a Monday morning a couple of weeks ago. We were cleaning the poop out of the pen inside the barn, and we had a wheelbarrow inside the pen and the gate was slightly open to allow the wheelbarrows to come and go as we cleaned. We do this all the time.
But on that day, Rheaa saw the open gate and nudged her way through into the rest of the barn. We saw her and called out, but soon Poppers was with her, heading out the door to the farm yard. This has…
