Statement of ethics
Lost Creek Llamas puts llamas' well-being first — before human desires and feelings.
We employ handling, training and management practices that minimize risk to llamas' physical and emotional well-being as much as is possible, to the best of our current knowledge — and we continually strive to improve our skills and knowledge.
At the same time, we believe that llamas' well-being includes teaching llamas good boundaries as part of safe and responsible behavior — necessary for domestic animals who must live and interact with humans, and crucial for healthy relationships.
We limit our breeding to a few llamas who produce purebred or true-to-type offspring that are in high demand, and we limit yearly production to the number of babies that we can effectively habituate, train, and interact with on a daily basis.
We guarantee our llamas. We hold that llamas' well-being and buyer satisfaction are inseparable.
We also guarantee that any llama we created can return here, whether for rehoming or retirement.
We support and participate in llama rescue and rescue prevention. We clean up after our own mistakes when necessary. We don't pretend that we haven't (and won't) make some mistakes; we don't use that as a rationalization to not maximize our efforts to prevent mistakes, either.
At the same time, we acknowledge that we have limits, our time is limited, and that we must make sound, mature choices that prioritize our own continued health and wellbeing as well as the health and wellbeing of the llamas and other animals that we're already committed to. We cannot rescue the world. We can help some ... up to our legitimate (not fantasized) capacities.
If you don't rescue, don't breed
We can do that. Can you?