When we took in the sheep and goats and Houdini the ‘guard llama’, Annaliese warned us the ewe might be pregnant because of the ram that was with them (we didn’t take the ram, she found him another home). Well, sure enough, we went out this morning and found two new additions to our flock. When we spotted them Mom just had one lamb by her side, and we walked out to the pasture to investigate and found a bigger lamb in the grass nearby. We thought he was dead, but saw he was breathing. One of his legs looked funny. Mom was headbutting the other animals that got too close, so we picked up the lambs and mom followed us over to the shelter, and we shut them in and shut everyone else out (except for little Gracie the goat, who can go through the gap under the gate).

After a few minutes the gimpy lamb stood up and took some milk from mom. Last I checked she had made a little nest in the straw and everyone was resting comfortably.

Funny how the other animals, especially the llamas, are so curious to watch what’s going on.

Well, welcome home to the newest member of our extended family – Patrone the llama! He is a handsome young man with a brown butt and a blue eye!

Patrone came from the Raley’s Rockin R Llama farm. I’ve met his mom and dad, and they are both beautiful too. Patrone is the first livestock animal I have actually bought because I wanted him, as opposed to the sheep, goats, and Houdini the llama, who were all rescued from a friends pasture to save them from the coyotes, and once they settled in it just seemed like they should stay.

Today Patrone is getting used to Scoops and Houdini, and the sheep and goats, and noisy barking Eskimos – lots to get used to!

He is a young llama, and I’m hoping that he will enjoy going for hikes and seeing new things. He’s probably going to get some experience with 4H this year, if one of the new kids in our llama club needs a llama to use. I’d like him to eventually be a pack llama. He has a bit of growing to do yet, but it’s a great time for him to start learning.

Finished! There is a gate so I can walk from the yard into the pen. On the other end of the pen there are three gates. When they are all open the animals can walk from the pasture into the pen, and there are two gateways to walk through so no one can play the bully and block out the other animals. But when two of them are closed, they form a stall on the end of the shelter. This is to isolate anyone I might want to deal with alone, or in most cases, to pen the sheep and goats away from the llamas, so they don’t steal the llamas food!

Then if I close the other little gate, the llamas are contained in the pen eating, and I can open the gate on the stall and the sheep and goats can go back out in the pasture.

The only design problem is that the wire fencing I bought is too lightweight, and the goats are rubbing on it and breaking the wire. I need to replace it with stronger wire, or build a wood fence the rest of the way around.

We worked all day putting up rafters and putting the metal roof on. It was pretty easy, but it was a stretch even for Dave to reach across and get it screwed down. Everything is done except the stall on the end of the shelter is not completely enclosed yet. We bought 8 ft boards when we needed 10s! So tomorrow one more trip to HD should do the trick.

Still, it was done enough to invite everyone in for dinner.

The shelter and feeding area is entirely enclosed, the idea being it will make a nice catch pen, and the animals will be comfortable going in there. We worked until sunset to finish enclosing it so we could leave our tools out there tonight, and tomorrow we will have everything ready for the final push to finish the roof.

We got the first crossbeams up today. The roof looks flat, but there is a slope to it. It is just an illusion because the land is sloped there as well. We spent a bit of time with levels trying to get the roof up as high as possible, and still have a slope to it for runoff. Unfortunately the land slopes to the left, and away from the camera, so we had to deal with leveling it in two directions, and the posts at the far end are not as tall as I’d like. That’s what I get for using the posts we had on hand, instead of buying ones that were as long as we needed. I think it will be ok, and Houdini looks like there’s still room for him in there. There’s more headroom for llamas at the other end.

We’ve got all the posts set this week, and they’ve finally dried, now we’re ready to start working on the roof.

We also added a tall post with a row of four birdhouses (the crucifix looking post on the right in the picture above) . This is for the purple swallows who flit around over the pasture eating bugs all summer. Last winter the big four-hole birdhouse they lived in blew down and busted, and when they came back in the spring there was no birdhouse, so they moved on! So this spring when they arrived I got right to work and set this up for them. I see they are already checking it out. I hope they move in and stay all summer. They eat lots of bugs!

Scoops is caught in the act of sniffing a sheep!

Houdini has a nice roll out in the pasture.

I have been getting the farm ready for my new addition, a llama of my very own! Houdini is a rescue, and Scoops is ‘borrowed’ from a friend, but I’ll soon be getting a nice young llama of my own choosing. I plan to train him to go packing, and maybe carting. It should be fun.

So I have been working on fences and doing this and that, figuring out how to feed the llamas without the sheep and goats stealing all their food. I have laid out plans to build a nice shelter and a little paddock for them, I just need to start digging post holes and get busy building it. I guess that’s where my kickback check from Uncle Sam will be going.