Grooming
Brushing
Llama's skin tends to be pretty sensitive and many llamas find grooming to be very irritating. This is further aggravated by the fact that their very fine fiber easily becomes matted and tangled, increasing the amount of jerking and twitching their skin must endure. Thus, brushing with anything but the gentlest of tools is likely to make you and your llama cranky with each other. If you must groom solely by brushing, use a gentle brush, NEVER a slicker brush. Try using a boar bristle brush or a brush with widely spaced rubber "teeth".To bathe or not to bathe
Some people prefer to bathe their llamas to groom them, others really are against it, as it is damaging to the structure of the fiber locks. We fall into the bathing camp, as we find that we can groom the llama thoroughly in a relatively short time, which is less stressful both to us and to the llama. Furthermore, the llamas do not appear to find brushing while wet as annoying as when their coats are dry.Our method is to thoroughly wet down the llama, shampoo it, brush the coat, rinse and brush, rinse and brush (until the soap is rinsed away), then use cream rinse. Leave the cream rinse on for 20 - 30 minutes, and then rinse it out thoroughly. We use Orvis animal shampoo and the least expensive people's cream rinse for the llamas. We use about 1 quart of cream rinse per llama.
Shearing
Reasons to shear a llama
- Yields fiber for spinning, weaving, felting
- Greatly increases comfort for llamas in hot weather
- If coat is matted, gives you a chance to "clear away" all those mats (you can't groom away a matted coat) and maintain a cleaner coat in the future
- A neater, tidier appearance of the llama
Side benefits of shearing a llama
- Really see what the llama's conformation is
- Get a better idea of the llama's true color
- Now the llama can compete in sheared llama classes
- Easier to assess progress of pregnancy