Llama Mia! : Prized Pets of Breeders and Backpackers, Camel’s Cousins Find Camelot in County

After an absence of a million years, give or take a millennium or two, llamas are coming home--and with the welcome they are getting, particularly in Orange County, they must be wondering why they ever left in the first place.

Of course, when their ancestors disappeared from the North American scene at the end of the Pleistocene Epoch, Orange Park Acres hadn’t quite been developed and Dee and Roger Kirkham weren’t even gleams in whatever passed for eyes among the creatures emerging from the primordial ooze.

After the last ice age, llamas pretty much settled down in the Andes of South America, only to suffer such indignities as being sacrificed to Incan gods, shorn of their wool (sometimes even skinned) and generally reduced to the level of the lowly donkey--pressed into service by the millions in the construction of railroads and the operation of tin mines.

Beasts of burden is what they became, guaranteed nothing like their standing at the Kirkhams’ two-acre Vintage Llamas farm in Orange Park Acres, where they are petted and pampered, hand-fed (or even bottle-fed when necessary), combed and brushed, loved and respected and generally treated as members of the family.

“They are members of my family,” said Dee Kirkham, incredulous that anyone would think otherwise. “I love them and they love us.”

At Vintage, the only llama breeding farm in the county, the llamas’ natural pride has been restored as they have become a sensation across the nation among ranchers, livestock breeders, backpackers and hunters. Because, with one exception, it has been illegal to import them since the great hoof-and-mouth disease epidemic of the late 1920s, they are in great demand and in very short supply (almost all of the estimated 17,000 llamas in the United States today are direct descendants of a small herd the late publishing magnate William Randolph Hearst kept on the grounds of his San Simeon castle).

And, about the only indignity they suffer these days is that their name has been mispronounced for so long by North Americans that the wrong pronunciation has become the accepted one. Just for the record, the double l in llama is like the double l in La Jolla; it has a y sound. A single l lama is a Tibetan monk, but as long as neither the monks nor the animals object, maybe it’s best to let sleeping llamas/lamas lie.

Why, one might ask, have they become such a valuable and sought-after commodity? Or, to get crudely to the point, just what good are they anyway?

“They are very warm and very gentle animals,” Dee Kirkham said. “They’re extremely clean, easy to train, economical to raise; they make great pets, live a long time (about 25 years) and are even good alarm animals (she says their natural clucking, humming sounds take on distinctive tones when there’s a strange animal or person on the premises).

“But they’re also very useful as pack animals because they’re extremely sure-footed and hardy and they don’t damage the environment in any way; they eat only the tops of green vegetation in the wild, and their hoofs are so padded that they barely leave a mark on the ground.”

Both the U.S. Forest Service and National Park Service apparently agree. In several areas of the country the government agencies use llamas for packing trash out of wilderness areas and for carrying tools and material needed by work parties and trail maintenance crews.

They can carry about 100 pounds of weight on their backs nonstop for up to 30 miles in a day and, like their cousin the camel, can literally go weeks without water.

Their wool is also prized because, unlike a sheep, theirs doesn’t contain lanolin or any other oil, so it stays--and smells--clean and produces considerably more spun yarn pound for pound. It’s also non-allergenic.

With their moccasin-like feet, many llamas are even allowed to wander in and out of their owners’ houses. At a recent meeting of the Southern California Llama Assn. (well, of course, there’s an association--and even a lush, four-color magazine) at Vintage farm, a visitor sitting in the living room suddenly found two llama kids nuzzling him for attention.

Don’t we worry about . . . well, you know . . . in the house? No, said Dee with a laugh. “While you can’t housebreak llamas as you would a dog or cat, they are very precise about where they do that. “ It seems they are gifted with what is called “manure-piling behavior,” meaning that their droppings, which resemble deer pellets, are always left in the same place in a pasture. If the call comes while they are in the house or barn or wherever, they will excuse themselves and head for their particular pile. And, because it is high in nitrogen, it makes good fertilizer; it can, the experts say, be applied directly to gardens without any harm to plants.

Dee Kirkham, an experienced horse breeder/trainer, says llamas are much easier to handle. “They don’t require as much space--you can have six to an acre as opposed to only three horses in the same area--and they don’t eat very much. A bale of hay will last a llama a whole month.” And while they are herding animals, they don’t require herding with their own; they are perfectly content sharing a pasture with horses, cattle or other animals.

The Kirkhams have eight llamas, including a kid that was born prematurely the last week in January. Named Harmony (the mother is Symphony), the kid was too weak to nurse and had to be placed in a veterinary hospital. The bonding between a mother and baby llama is fragile and in this case was broken in the week Harmony was hospitalized. The mother’s milk also dries up almost immediately, so that means Harmony will have to be bottle-fed, a prospect in which Dee seems to delight.

“My children were asking me if I was as excited when they were born,” she said, without revealing her answer.

Roger said he sometimes has to remind Dee that they are “just animals . . . and that they’re bred to thrive in the Andes,” which, after all, isn’t exactly Palm Springs. “When it rains, she runs out and herds them into the stable,” he said, shaking his head.

Besides, they have real children running around the place, lots of them--a total of five from their previous marriages. Dee, 40, has Ronie, 10, and Jennifer, 14. Roger, 43, has Todd, 10, Toddi, 13, and Tracy, 14.

Ronie shares his mother’s love for llamas and even garnered a blue ribbon for showing one at the Riverside Farmers’ Fair last year (llamas are also stamping out a solid place in 4-H activities around the country).

While Roger likes the animals, he leaves the operation of the farm to Dee while he manages his construction business, Pacific Construction & Interiors in Irvine.

And not to be mistaken, llama-breeding is a business too, and potentially a lucrative one. Consider this: A prize stud male sold last year at auction for $85,000. While that high a price mystifies Dee (“I can only figure someone wanted him very badly”), she does find the prospects intriguing.

Currently, males usually sell for between $500 and $5,000, depending on color and other standards involving ears, legs, etc. Good breeding females go for between $6,000 and $8,000.

Charles J. (Chuck) Horwitz breeds llamas on his Malibu ranch. “Not only are they terrific pets,” he said, “but a very good investment.”

He said his dream was to own a ranch after retirement, and after he bought it, “I tried cattle--and lost my shirt. So then I tried horses--and lost my shirt. Now I’m raising llamas, and I’m making money off the ranch for the first time.”

Dee’s hope is to breed smaller llamas, something that will take three or four generations to accomplish, and also to offer her farm as a sort of bed-and-breakfast place for other llamas, not unlike stables where horse owners can board their stock.

“But I also want to help however I can with the training,” she said, “so I’m giving serious thought to making this kind of a ‘full-service’ farm for llamas, where you can buy one, breed it, board it and train it.”

Meanwhile, she has her hands full with a nursing baby Harmony and three other females all scheduled to give birth in the coming weeks.

When Dee Kirkham has a bad day, she says all she has to do is walk down to the pasture and share some of the serenity of her animals, which quietly follow her around the property like dogs, occasionally nuzzling her for some attention or a snack.

It’s a peace disturbed now and then only by the screeching brakes of passers-by who wonder if they haven’t taken a wrong turn and wound up in Peru.