I need the help of the guild. We have three crias who are housed with their mothers. They are still nursing but we've begun to feed the crias grain. Two of the mothers have never produced enough milk...we supplemented with milk for months and now have gotten all three crias on grain. We separate the mothers and crias while feeding the grain. One of the crias is something a bully and will push the other two out of their feeding bowls. When I feed these crias I'll put Rainy (the pushy cria) at one end and then make sure she does not go to the other bowls...if she looks like she's going to move towards the others, I'll say "no stealing food" and she will get back to her own bowl...it truly seems to work! I work during the day so my husband feeds the Llamas on two of the mornings and then every afternoon during the week (Mon., Wed & Fri. I'll feed them breakfast). This past weekend I was feeding the Llamas when Ed walked up. Rainy immediately ran to the other crias, pushed them out of the way and started eating out of their bowls while ignoring me when I did the "no stealing" routine. I was chasing Rainy like a mad woman trying to get her back to her bowl. My husband watched all of this activity and then told me that he allows Rainy to go to any bowl because you can't teach a Llama NOT to be food aggressive...that it was the "pecking order." Unfortunately, this got me VERY angry as I felt all my training had been wasted! Months ago, we had talked about how I wanted to train Rainy NOT to be food aggressive and I thought we had agreed. Ed works the farm while I work in town so he is with all of our animals a lot more than I am...that's by necessity. So I'm asking the guild...if a Llama has a tendency to be food aggressive can it be trained to NOT behave in such a manner. I am totally convinced that this behavior can be minimized. My husband needs to hear from someone other than me before he will be convinced. He has promised to abide by what I am doing...at least for now.
