Good morning! Biscotti here again. One thing about my life as a young alpaca that you may have noticed,, changes happen a lot. We all have our routines. We eat our grain, some hay and then we graze on grass in our pasture. It's pretty standard alpaca living. We enjoy our surroundings. If it is hot, we lay under the big trees in our pasture to stay cool. When it is colder, we like to run and pronk to show off our speed and agility and because we are happy! It was a couple of weeks after the storm and things had finally got back to normal. The fallen branches had been removed and we were back in our routine.
One Saturday afternoon, we saw a truck and trailer entering our area. We were all excited to see what was happening. The trailer backed up to the empty pasture by my mom’s pasture. We noticed our human and another man getting out of the truck. Once the door opened out jumped two big llamas. Both looked much bigger than Louie and we found out from my mom that they were both female. I saw my mom, and her herd walk over to the fence to introduce themselves. They were too far away for us to do the same. Like Louie, they were trained guard llamas and we eventually found out, they were hired to watch over my mom’s herd. Initially Louie didn’t seem very happy about this, but he did have a lot of responsibility and area to cover. He had been working a bunch of overtime, so these additions should give him a break.
Snowy was the smaller of the two and Sophia was the larger one. Mom told me they are very nice and would be a great asset to the ranch. It was nice to add two more friends to our Camelid family.
Adding Snowy and Sophia also changed the dynamics of the herds. Once they got established, they were moved into my mom’s pasture permanently. This meant Louie was moved into our pasture and became our official leader. During the day we all hung out together. When we were grazing, he would join us or sit and to stand guard. He made us feel safe.
We watched Snowy and Sophia do the same with mom’s herd. They were fun to watch because they had worked together for 5 years. They walked “in-sync” and showed amazing teamwork. You could tell they were "professional" guards by the way they worked. They were pretty impressive. I know mom and her herd felt very safe with this "dynamic duo" overseeing them.
After a few weeks, Louie, Snowy and Sophia started interacting at night and would roam both pastures. The lady Llamas came over to us, so we could introduce ourselves. Mom was right, they were very nice and looked even bigger up close. Now that we had 3 guardians overseeing us at night, we all slept soundly. Initially Louie wasn't too happy because I guess he felt he was being demoted. He finally realized these additions were a very good thing. I saw they had meetings and they really started to bond. They worked out agreements that they could rotate sleeping and standing guard. This allowed Louie to get more sleep and I'm sure made him feel better. Once again we learned a change sometimes seems bad at first, but it can actually turnout to be a very good thing. The new additions to our family were great and our ranch continues to be a wonderful home! - B