Llamas are strange critters, but I guess most of you have figured that out by now! For the most part they are unlike any other critter making this planet their home! One of the ways they show this difference is in their unique way of working with temperatures.

One of the main reasons llamas have survived all sorts of changes in their environment and living conditions is that llamas are one of the most adaptable animals on earth. While this adaptability has given them wonderful survival tools it has also cast a number of burdens on them.

Perhaps the most powerful and potentially deadly tools given to them is something I'll refer to as the "TEMPERATURE SET RANGE". Within about a year of moving to a new area, llamas will, for the most part, 'make peace", as it were, with their new temperature range. In my opinion, llamas all have a temperature range in which they thrive. Most of them thrive in a temperature range of 60 or more degrees. There will be the occasional rise above or fall below but the time of overage or underage is short and a healthy adult animal has the ability to handle this with just a little help from the 'two leggeds' around them!

They all need help to sail through these extremes: cooling factors in the barn, shearing, electrolytes, wading ponds, and large doses of loving watchfulness from their 'two leggeds".

Cold temperature overages can cause at least as serious a problem. Requiring shelter from wind and cold, extra rations (I always used cracked corn as it burns nice and warm), blankets, even warm water to drink is a really good help in fighting hypothermia.

Always keep up with parasite control, as those animals compromised by parasites or chronic illness, will not be able to put up a lot of fight against overages or under-ages.

I sure can't give you any scientific proof of this theory, nor can I verify this by referring to any famous vets.. All that I can give you is anecdotal evidence, so here goes: Some years back, I obtained a female llama from South Florida. She was a small llama (another survival change that occurs in very hot climates!). She was a llama that I bought purely because of her personality, as besides being tiny, she was darn near hairless; her coat was shorter than many dogs' coats. She was really a lot of work that first winter, as she started shaking when the temperature got below 45 or 50! But with lots of coats, cracked corn, warm drinking water, as well as a warm room (I insulated a room in the barn, put a thick bed of hay on the floor and had several (barn safe) heaters running inside it, and the door cracked for easy access and egress), she made it through that first winter just fine and by the next winter she had a much thicker and longer coat, plus her internal thermostat had had time to adjust, so she just sailed along from then on.

The first year I got into llamas, I bought a Canadian stud from llama folks at the llama conference in Montana. They had just bought a load of llamas in western Canada and were taking them south to live. I lived in upper South Carolina at the time so they dropped him off for me. Talk about a babe in the woods! No one in the south knew much about llamas back then, and it's a wonder that that poor llama survived that first winter. Back then there was very little known about heat stress or even about the dangers of getting a llama that far out of their (TEMPERATURE SET RANGE) Poor 'Feni Yukon Thunderbird' had quite a time surviving that first summer. That year, I discovered wading pools, barn fans, wetting down the interior of the barn daily, electrolytes and lots more cooling tricks, but he could easily have croaked before we figured out his problem and what to do about it.

To obtain more nuts and bolts on how to help your llama manage these temperature challenges, may I recommend that you get hold of a small book I wrote a while back (and updated a few years later) which gives many details of everything from barn planning to feeding schedule. It's surely not the most up-to-date or current book around on llamas, but as far as I know it's the only one in publication that gets down and gives you details, lots of details, on protecting your dear friends during temperature problems.