So after a very up-n-down summer of hiking trips/hospital trips it was the busy season at last. When all my boys are spoken for and have to be on top of their game My 4 year olds' first year of what I refer to as "throwing them to the wolves". And for good reason. We have a saying here at corral creek llamas, "some people should stick to ATV's" Only funny cause it is true.
Feedback on the boys was generally good/great once you sift carefully through the details of each review, after all, nobody comes back and says "these animals were perfect you should think about charging more" I listen carefully but never let any one opinion determine an animal's status without taking them myself under exactly the same conditions, as closely as I can duplicate.
When a 7/with trailer rental depleted my numbers for my personal season it was time for the "trial by fire". I loaded up 9 with all 6 of my four year olds' included, as the rental always takes precedence over personal trips. 9 was going to set a new personal size record for solo pack strings under anything other than ideal conditions (as in around my yard carrying Styrofoam!) Usually I try to keep it to 6-7 when solo, as any rodeo becomes exponentially worse with more llamas.
This was made more interesting when departure day was -15 degrees. It is very hard to pack sparingly when it is -15 flipping degrees! One tends to take extra socks...
Any how the payload ran to 465 lbs. after I cut off the handle of my toothbrush.
Snow pack was at 5-10" cold was enough to be classed as brutal, for things like putting on saddles etc. The trail needed substantial cutting of downed timber as previous users had dropped the ball. A chainsaw on the lead llama has been pretty much standard practice since the beetles.
The trip just could not have been better, these guys did me proud. There is little more gratifying than going in the back country with self trained llamas to go and get the "free meat" and having it all work like a well-oiled machine. One re-pack on trail of that damnable cot (as usual) and other than that it went like clockwork, veterans front, veterans back, and 6 youngsters middle.
And after a couple days it warmed up a bit to be a little less like a north pole expedition. Stayed a couple weeks had a very good time in some beautiful country. The hike out went even better as some angel had just cut the trail 2 weeks previous.
Feedback on the boys was generally good/great once you sift carefully through the details of each review, after all, nobody comes back and says "these animals were perfect you should think about charging more" I listen carefully but never let any one opinion determine an animal's status without taking them myself under exactly the same conditions, as closely as I can duplicate.
When a 7/with trailer rental depleted my numbers for my personal season it was time for the "trial by fire". I loaded up 9 with all 6 of my four year olds' included, as the rental always takes precedence over personal trips. 9 was going to set a new personal size record for solo pack strings under anything other than ideal conditions (as in around my yard carrying Styrofoam!) Usually I try to keep it to 6-7 when solo, as any rodeo becomes exponentially worse with more llamas.
This was made more interesting when departure day was -15 degrees. It is very hard to pack sparingly when it is -15 flipping degrees! One tends to take extra socks...
Any how the payload ran to 465 lbs. after I cut off the handle of my toothbrush.
Snow pack was at 5-10" cold was enough to be classed as brutal, for things like putting on saddles etc. The trail needed substantial cutting of downed timber as previous users had dropped the ball. A chainsaw on the lead llama has been pretty much standard practice since the beetles.
The trip just could not have been better, these guys did me proud. There is little more gratifying than going in the back country with self trained llamas to go and get the "free meat" and having it all work like a well-oiled machine. One re-pack on trail of that damnable cot (as usual) and other than that it went like clockwork, veterans front, veterans back, and 6 youngsters middle.
And after a couple days it warmed up a bit to be a little less like a north pole expedition. Stayed a couple weeks had a very good time in some beautiful country. The hike out went even better as some angel had just cut the trail 2 weeks previous.
