Nothing can replace a cria that Miss Cierra is not going to birth; learning llamas includes disappointment. I really wanted her blood line but she is 14 so I think it prudent to retire her and find that line elsewhere. Balancing that sorrow are the two new girls in my herd, and while they are not newly born, they are newly separated from their mothers, and you can tell. Maria and SP are spending their first full day on the farm, and amazingly, they have really settled in. But not surprisingly, they are homesick, missing mothers, missing a large herd where they knew everyone, missing Carol and Buck Hollow Llamas.
I am trying to be a good stand in, and Maria already comes to me. After feeding, I took her for a walk to the pond area where I thought she might graze, but she was much too interested in her surroundings. SP is shyer but by late this afternoon, she was nuzzling me face-to-face. Tomorrow should bring a walk with her. Such graceful beautiful creatures. Wonderful fiber too, but the personalities are what sold me, enough that I switched from Bodacious, a stunning-looking llama, to SP at Carol's open barn. Just loved the the manageability and people-pleasing nature of SP. Of all my herd, the girls would only know and possibly recognize Et Cetera, and so it is no surprise that they bonded to her. What did surprise me is Et Cetera's response; she is mothering them, staying with them, forming a sub-herd of 3. When Tess, Rev, and Miss Cierra went to pasture again late morning, Et Cetera stayed behind with the new girls, mentoring, guiding, and teaching them.
I agonized for months over how they would settle in, if they would be accepted, and would there be enough room for all of them to have fan access. Guess I shouldn't have lost sleep over this one. The two young 'uns stay together, and consider the first stall they entered as theirs. That's where they head, and Et Cetera is right there with them, their stand-in mother. She kushes down with them, calls them to follow her, and they travel together in a small pack.
We are so rain deprived, I followed Carol's advice and brought hay to the pasture. The girls dug in at the beginning, but then went back to browsing the sparse orchard grass. If only we could have several days of gentle rain to green the fields.
Stress--and wicked bad thunderstorms (try hail in May)--always show true colors in man or beast. My second year's experience clipping my llamas (I watch, pray, provide moral support for the girls) was one for the books. The best and the worst of the girls shinned through. So let me begin with Tabbethia Haubold, groomer extraordinaire. I was her last stop at the end of jam-packed crazy week. With four girls to shear and counting down to returning to her Yaphank, NY home, Tabbethia is all business. So is my husband in business matters, so I totally understand her. Twice she called to remind me to have the girls in the stalls, haltered, and ready (her customer before me failed to comply). We were over-the-top-ready, for way too long a time for girls who are used to deciding their day.
Tabbethia is beautiful and incredibly strong, but that's the end of the story. She drove through golf-ball hailstorms and the second-worst thunderstorm, weather according to me. Tabbethia wants her best llama last and the most-stressed first. So we began with Et Cetera, who had a spit fight with Tess during the thunderstorm because Tess tried to mount her. I recited and sang the "Hail Mary"in more ways and versions than all the churches in Christendom combined, 93 minutes worth, so I was really prayered up for the clipping. All the girls benefited from my second-year calm, but Tess actually responded to the prayers, like Barnabas in The Mitford Books. I tried praying again today, and again, Tess responded in the same way. Perhaps it is just her love of attention, but I think differently. Et Cetera was a jewel, that Sophisticated Lady she truly is (if I could rename her, it would be Lady). After her, the rest of the clipping was an exercise in degrees of not as good.
Tess was second, and except for a half-dozen kicks that did not make their mark, she was a good girl. She is a kicker, much like a mare that I had years ago, Scout's Honor. Gentle, calm, but always quick to kick. We took Miss Cierra next, because I was saving the best for last. Cierra is pregnant, due June 10, and except for not liking her belly and sides, and her neck (I forgot to tell Tabbethia about a benign small growth), she was really very good. Excellent for a near-due date pregnancy. Almost no trouble.
Saving the best for last made me wrong again (Mickey's second favorite phrase). Good last year, she was your worst nightmare yesterday. Honestly, I thought we would not get her clipped. Pictures or a video would have been amazing but not humanly possible. The smallest of the four, she was as bad as my 16.3 Thoroughbred-Warmblood cross was once during a storm. Oddly, by the time Tabbethia arrived (spelled her name without looking this time), the sun was out. Hormones, pregnancy, call it what you want, as I see it, Rev was worse than any big, bad horse ever was for clipping.
Without a doubt, Rev was the surprise and a bad one at that. But there were other surprises as well. Tabbethia thinks I am the most non-aggressive person out there, and apparently so does my breeder, Carol Reigh. Funny, isn't it; if they only knew.... Guess Tabbethia based it on my telling her that discovering Rev's toenail issue ruined my Mother's Day (it truly did; I had trouble enjoying what was a wonderful day). Yet she realized that I was not worried, rather a really cool customer, helping her handle clipping Rev. Funny, but I really was non-plussed about her bad behavior. I kept telling Rev she was a good girl, with Tabbethia saying oh not she isn't or NOT! So I sweat the small stuff, but am a real trouper with hard things. I told Tabbethia that I have always known who I am, including my oddities, and she seemed to respect that.
I learned that I will never clip the girls. Ever. She has a job for life, and no amount of money would ever make me change my mind. Frankly, clipping a bad horse is much easier than a bad llama. The chute that Carol sold me is worth a Sumo wrestler's weight in gold. If ever a piece of equipment was tested and passed with five-star general status, it would be Carol's chute. So if you have camelids and you do not have her chute, invest in your herd's future and buy one. After working so brutally hard on the farm yesterday, to go to a go-round with the girls was just another day in the life of a farm girl.
You can discover more about Tabbethia Haubold's business, check out her website, Long Island Livestock Company. She conducts an educational program about llamas, sponsors camelid fiber shows, judges in the show ring, spins her llama fiber and offers yarn products for sale. And we know she is one great shearer; when she had to, she bodily lifted Rev, getting her to stand when the belly harness just would not do the job. And after all that, Tabbethia had a three-hour drive home. God bless her!
Gave you her coordinates, just in case you are a geocaching llama lover like me.
If you read spy novels, you have learned to read the tell of characters that people your fictional worlds. If you know me well, you can read the tells that my life is raging beyond bounds: clutter abounds and I do not get to blog. Piles strewn, like mental labyrinths, can be navigated, but nothing compensates for a stockpile of posts piling like leaves, needing collection. So it is that this post is a retrospective, something that happened last weekend. It was an event, and it had that look.
The notion of that look has morphed through time. Younger and thinner, I had that look, and walking through Hess's, I was often mistaken for a model. Grand fun. My mother loved every minute. Then, as you move through life, that look becomes a child's face on the moment of crumbling into something that will keep you up nights. That look on Cierra's face, poking out through the plastic sheets, had the tell. She was there, but somehow I knew Et Cetera was not. A mother's instinct easily transfers to animals, so I got on the golf cart determined to see if the fence was breached. Not. Then I saw her, in the middle of an alfalfa field, munching, determined not be to be lured. Long story short: when you have only you to count on, you pray to God and your favorite saint to give you that one chance you have to catch the wayward one. Prayers answered and Et Cetera rewarded with more grain than she deserved, but safely home.
Now we use the electric fence, which I hate but see as necessary. Still I am haunted about how she escaped. Next Friday we are adding a bottom row of fencing, and before the birth of our first cria, two things will happen: we WILL turn the electric fence off, and we WILL install a containment fence on the outside perimeter of our first fence. I have relearned how there are no sure things in life, just those things on which you hang your hopes and dreams, and you do what is necessary to insure their safety.
Nothing can replace a cria that Miss Cierra is not going to birth; learning llamas includes disappointment. I really wanted her blood line but she is 14 so I think it prudent to retire her and find that line elsewhere. Balancing that sorrow are the two new girls in my herd, and while they are not newly born, they are newly separated from their mothers, and you can tell. Maria and SP are spending their first full day on the farm, and amazingly, they have really settled in. But not surprisingly, they are homesick, missing mothers, missing a large herd where they knew everyone, missing Carol and Buck Hollow Llamas.
and Maria already comes to me. After feeding, I took her for a walk to the pond area where I thought she might graze, but she was much too interested in her surroundings. SP is shyer but by late this afternoon, she was nuzzling me face-to-face. Tomorrow should bring a walk with her. Such graceful beautiful creatures. Wonderful fiber too, but the personalities are what sold me, enough that I switched from Bodacious, a stunning-looking llama, to SP at Carol's open barn. Just loved the the manageability and people-pleasing nature of SP. Of all my herd, the girls would only know and possibly recognize Et Cetera, and so it is no surprise that they bonded to her. What did surprise me is Et Cetera's response; she is mothering them, staying with them, forming a sub-herd of 3. When Tess, Rev, and Miss Cierra went to pasture again late morning, Et Cetera stayed behind with the new girls, mentoring, guiding, and teaching them.
I agonized for months over how they would settle in, if they would be accepted, and would there be enough room for all of them to have fan access. Guess I shouldn't have lost sleep over this one. The two young 'uns stay together, and consider the first stall they entered as theirs. That's where they head, and Et Cetera is right there with them, their stand-in mother. She kushes down with them, calls them to follow her, and they travel together in a small pack.
We are so rain deprived, I followed Carol's advice and brought hay to the pasture. The girls dug in at the beginning, but then went back to browsing the sparse orchard grass. If only we could have several days of gentle rain to green the fields.
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