miranda photo

Hi Trl Miranda

 

ILR # 288648

female  b. 08-16-2015

Hi Trl Commander Spock x BBR Malinda

Miranda is an energetic and independent young llama, but also very amenable to interacting with humans.

Miranda is one of the last llamas produced from Al Ellis's core keeper herd. We selected Miranda not for her size, but because she has the requisite athleticism, energy, and ancestral history of longevity and soundness — Miranda's sire and dam were also selected with equal emphasis on soundness and working ability. As a result, Miranda herself not only meets our stringent criteria, but is also primed to produce "complete package" pack animals for those who have a genuine need for taller llamas.

In addition to Miranda's athleticism and excellent boldness and working disposition, her coat density is low, her sire was sound and energetic at 19 years of age, and her dam has aged extremely well, maintaining excellent pasterns and structural integrity while producing 14 healthy offspring in 21 years. Even though Miranda does not have as much guard hair and seasonal shedding as we select for — she is between classic and k'ara type, and we are breeding specifically for the preservation of Classic llamas — and her gaits are just "OK" by our standards, her many other excellent traits all compensate more than enough for having to "breed up" those drawbacks. In addition, despite her sire's heavy representation in the packing llama gene pool, Miranda brings our breeding herd an essential injection of genetic diversity, which is sorely lacking in what remains of the true Classic gene pool.

We still expect that Miranda will produce some very fine offspring, and we expected to offer for sale to the pack llama community, but life has a way of taking some funny turns. In July 2021, Miranda left us to become a "working mom", and we know she will do well at both facets of that career in her new home.

Miranda loves "llama cookies" to a fault, earning her the nickname "Cookie Monster".

Sondra Ellis liked to name their llamas by themes; for females, she often selected names that began with the same letter as their dams. In our experience, this often results in a mismatch between name and llama. However, after finding out the meaning is "admirable and wonderful", we knew "Miranda" did fit perfectly!

Meet Miranda's offspring: