Llama Salon
Friday, April 2nd, 2010Brad’s nails had gotten out of control. They were really long and curled around and it was getting to the point where he was going to be crippled if they weren’t trimmed. The problem is he’s touchy about his legs, and whenever we’d even make a gesture toward them, he’d flip out and run away or nearly knock us over. I decided to build a chute to restrain him so we could safely get him trimmed. Using only materials I got from the dump (with the exception of about $5 worth of screws and bolts from the hardware store), Delia and I built the Llama Salon.
It’s 25″ wide, 65″ long, and 70″ high. Brad walks in from the back, and then there are two moveable boards at the front that can clamp down (lightly!) on his neck right by his shoulders so he can’t walk forward and also can’t thrash the front of his body around. The rear of his body cam move some, but he can’t spin around, which is what he’d do when we’d try to do it before we had this chute. He’s then tied in the front with a lead rope so he can’t move backward.
The Llama Salon made it a LOT easier to get the job done, though it was still FAR from easy. Let me tell you something: llamas are strong. Even with his neck immobilized, he was able to completely throw us around when we’d grab one of his legs. He’d also cush (that’s what it’s called when llamas lay down – don’t ask me why) when we were trying to grab his feet. The funny thing is he was like an Irish dancer while this was going on. The front of him stayed completely still while his legs were flailing around like crazy. He kept eating his hay even while flinging us around. We finally just grabbed onto one front foot and held it as still as we could and held on until he mostly gave up thrashing it around, and got his nails trimmed down. The back feet were another story. We finally gave up trying to hold them after getting slammed against the walls of the chute a few times, and then we discovered we could trim them while he was standing as long as we were quick about it.
On the last nail, some blood was shed. We cut him a little too deep and he started bleeding pretty badly. It slowed down but never stopped, so I went over to a friend’s and got some blood stop powder, which did the trick.
So now Brad’s nails are less of a disgrace! We’re going to try to trim them back a little more next week, and then hopefully they’ll be somewhat slow growing so we don’t have to repeat this process too often. Nobody enjoys it.

















