Eagle's Nest Graehawke
ILR # 267116
female b. 7-18-2003 . . . d. 11.2021
Gold'n Hawk x Green Valley's Picabo
Graehawke stood a solid 46" and was a remarkable athlete. She never was the kind of llama who seeks out interaction with humans, and she rejected our slow and savvy overtures her entire life.
Graehawke had an exceptionally nice Classic coat — the epitome of the “old kind” with an undercoat that grooms out almost entirely with a slicker brush and with no objection from the llama. That was just the icing on a strong and straight body. We had long wanted a Gold’n Hawk daughter with Gold’n Hawk’s excellent classic coat, logically-inclined nature, and stupendously heavy muscling and bone along with the other physical, temperamental, and genetic traits that we insist each of our breeding animals embody. Graehawke fit our desires to a “T” ... a dream come true! Unfortunately, Graehawke was bred to multiple proven studs several times and produced nothing. So much for dreams.
In early 2011, our veterinarian did diagnose a herd-wide subclinical selenium deficiency that, after treatment, is proving to be the cause of many of our females successfully conceiving but then losing pregnancies during the last few years. We had given up hope, but armed with that new information, we invested in a reproductive exam for Graehawke, which did not turn up any abnormalities. Subsequent correction of magnesium and iodine deficiencies has also improved reproductive success here, and it has also put Graehawk's cycling back to normal ... but her confirmed-via-ultrasound (complete with beating-heart embryo) pregnancy did not carry to term.
Graehawke's final "job" was to be a sheep guard, but she escaped first the compound and then the property though a gate that had been left open. Unfortunately, she also went feral. At age 18, she was running up and down steep hills and alarming at anything she saw in the distance ... including some former pasturemates we brought as "bait". That neighboring property owner demanded that Graehawke be caught or shot, and because all attempts to lure her in failed, she met an untimely end, for which we still feel great anger and sorrow.
Graehawke’s name reflects both her color (grey-brown, or dun) and her sire (Gold'n Hawk, who goes by “Hawk”).