Guardians of the Herd

by Lisa Shimeld

Llamas are often employed by alpaca ranches to guard their herd. A gelding or female llama can serve in this role and usually gets along well with its smaller cousins. Often the llama will assume leadership of the group and will watch out for potential threats. When we purchased our first 3 alpacas we also bought a wonderful llama named Clem. Clem is an extremely alert llama and did a wonderful job for us. He recently moved to the Lazy K Alpaca Ranch in Reno Nevada where he continues to serve as guardian of an alpaca herd.

We have found that many alpacas also make outstanding guard animals. We rely primarily on our alpaca gelding Teak to keep a loving watch over "his" herd. Teak is ever vigilant and never has he sounded the alarm without a good reason. Alpacas have amazing eyesight and Teak is no exception. Sometimes when he sounds the alarm we can't see who he is "shouting at" but if we continue to look in the same direction as Teak we will eventually see the offender.

In addition to acting as a guard animal Teak provides another valuable service to our herd. He acts as an uncle and companion to the younger alpacas. We often put Teak in with a newly weaned alpaca and he immediately adopts the unhappy youngster. Teak was a constant companion to Cherry Garcia (Broc) from the day he was born. He would routinely baby-sit for Broc's mom when she needed a break from the daily rigors of motherhood. When Broc was weaned he and Teak became inseparable and it was absolutely darling to watch Teak teach him how to be a good alpaca. As a result of Teak's good influence Broc grew up to be a well manner male who doesn't tolerate fighting or other bad behavior in his herd mates. Teak sometimes also accompanies animals when they would otherwise be traveling alone. For these reasons it is extremely unlikely that you will ever see Teak on our sales list. No one could afford to pay what he is worth to us!

Last Modified: July 15, 2005, 10:18 pm