This spring we moved Pepsi, our stud male along with his mate Nazca up to a rented field, and during the two months or so that they were there, their toenails have grown amazingly!
Under normal circumstances they wear them down by pawing the ground and by walking along the roads or the rough & tumble of the hard standing in their paddocks, but in the rented field there’s just soft grass, and so the nails didn’t wear down and os they needed to be cut.
Llamas are big animals, and getting your head down to feet level is quite a scary thought, and a few bruises in the shin is testament to the fact that they can kick, so… we gave in and called the professionals.
Often, it is the shearers that do the toe nails. Whilst they have the llama under control for shearing they just cut the nails, almost while they are not looking, but as we have no intention of shearing our llamas, at least not with electric shears, we needed someone special.
The lady in question comes up from Cornwall and uses a system called Camelid Dynamics to train llamas and llama owners and Vicki has been on her course, but doesn’t feel confident to do the nails, so this lady just pops up, we get the llamas in a pen one by one, and five minutes later they look at me and say – what was all that about, and the nails have been trimmed almost without them really knowing!
It’ll be done so infrequently, and despite us watching and learning, I suspect that we’ll have this lady back again!
