What's New !!!
Recent changes at Lost Creek,
and to the website
07.28.2024
Cynamon and Finn are on an adventure together! They are on a care lease just up the road from us, providing companionship to a lonely older horse who had lived with llamas in the past.
Scioty has left us to rejoin his agemate Aldwyn and former pasturemate Troubadour! Scioty was definitely not for sale and we miss him very much, but we also couldn't bring ourselves to deny this unparalleled opportunity to everyone else involved: Scioty, Aldwyn, Troubadour, and their delightful human caretakers.
One female has confirmed pregnant for next year; this means we'll have one 2025 baby ... or none at all (because "stuff" happens, as any realistic breeder knows).
05.20.2024
New faces for 2024 are Lost Creek Bindi and Lost Creek Sierra
Carhartt, Scioty, Gio and Finn have been gelded
Duke's book for outside breedings filled early this year!
We said our last goodbyes to Credo
07.13.2023
Photos updated for Seedskadee, Ouray, and Kody
07.11.2023
Harlequinn and Toya'ana left for their new home yesterday. They join Harlequinn's mom Hi Trl Miranda.
Rattlesnake Ridge Pepperfaire finally joined us after a delay due to pneumonia.
Lost Creek Sagehopper left for an open-ended breeding lease to Rattlesnake Ridge Ranch.
Joey's return to sane (and sweet) behavior post-breeding (and our ongoing delight with both Gio and Arwen) has motivated us to brainstorrm some radically different approaches to managing him while breeding next year. Joey's castration will be postponed, and Gio will remain intact as a backup.
Carhartt has been removed from our stud service offerings; we will only offer Duke for stud service to outside females in the foreseeable future.
We are excited to be welcoming Twigga to Lost Creek later this year (after our Fjord mare Hallie has her unplanned foal and we're able to leave the farm again). To facilitate and maximize Twigga's potential contributions to our herd, we will postpone barn replacement until she has aged out of reproduction ... and that means we'll breed a few other females for the next 2-3 years as well.
06.17.2023
Wow, what a year since the last update.
Late 2022 was smoke-filled and fraught with other tensions, and we were not able to do any trail riding with our Fjords nor any llama packing as we had planned and looked forward to. Add the new permit system that's in place for many of our favorite trails and haunts, and we're ... grumpy. To say the least! But 2023 is a new year and where there's life, there's hope.
During 2022, Arikaree retuned home, Harlequinn left, and then Harlequinn came back. Kahlotus returned, and then found a new home. Musical llamas is a lot of work; it's a good thing we like them and can afford to lose money on finding them their best-fit homes, even when those ever-possible "life happens" things strike.
In 2023, our Fjord mare Hallie returned (pregnant) in March
In May, we welcomed Lost Creek Arwen to the farm. Arwen was born on Gwen's (and Seedskadee's!) birthday, so it's a cinch she's staying right here. Arwen has been a delightful distraction during a very disturbing time for us.
After doing our best, we've reached the difficult but correct decision to castrate Joey. As a result, his son Gio will remain intact as a stud prospect rather than "just" being a harness gelding.
The repurposed and oft-repaired structure that has served as our maternity barn is reaching the end of its useful life. After the 2024 babies are weaned, we will take at least one year off from breeding to allow adequate time to construct a sturdy and purpose-built replacement.
We continue to provide both hands-on training assistance and remote consultation to a variety of dedicated llama lovers and enthusiasts.
06.20.2022
More new faces! Welcome to the world, Lost Creek Ranger Finn and Lost Creek Pequop.
We have a guest llama staying with us: Rattlesnake Ridge Aquila. Aquila has no rambunctious male playmates at his home, so he will spend his active and formative period here with Lightfoot (and later, our 2022 weanling males). This means Cynamon is FINALLY excused from babysitting duty!
We also look forward to Rattlesnake Ridge Pepperfaire joining us after she's weaned and ready to relocate.
Skookum left for his new home at the end of May and is reported to be settling in extremely well.
04.10.2022
We welcomed Lost Creek Gio and Lost Creek Rowena, and we said our goodbyes to Luka, who stubbornly hung on as long as he possibly could but just didn't have any body left to pull that off.
03.19.2022
2021 was another unpleasant fire season with many days of heavy smoke,and although it was not as bad as in 2020, once again many of our local trails, forests, and wildernesses were closed to entry. Between that and the new limited entry permit system in our nearby forests and wildernesses, we are getting really sick and tired of being squeezed out of our local hiking and packing haunts!
Dazzle was euthanized in November 2021 at the age of 23.5 years.
Dunc'n Hawk died mysteriously in February 2022; much to our distress, we were denied a necropsy.
Arikaree went to her new nonbreeding home in early March 2022, where she mentors Juniper, another young llama, and is much loved.
Four females are awaiting the arrival of 2022 babies: Sage, Cinder, Fiona and Aurora. They are due between late March and early May.
08.03.2021
A lot has happened in the past year!
Lost Creek Harlequinn (last offspring of Troubadour) and Lost Creek Toya'ana (first offspring of Duke) were born in mid-July and early August 2020 respectively.
Our farm was in the thick of the terrible smoke from the 2020 fire season, and all public lands were closed ... no hiking ... and this after many local trails were initially closed due to COVID-19 earlier in the year.
In January 2021, we lost Highlight.
In April we welcomed Slate Peak's Aurora for a breeding lease, and Takoda Peak as a new stud prospect.
In May we greeted three new faces, Lost Creek Ranger Lightfoot and two purebred Norwegian Fjord colts.
Twelve llamas have gone to new homes over the past 13+months, and an old friend (Lost Creek Credo) has returned, at least temporarily.
06.13.2020
Taos unexpectedly passed away
"Available" llamas updated again
04.05.2020
Many individual llama page updates (text)
"Available" llamas updated
08.24.2019
Three baby llamas and two Norwegian Fjord foals born at Lost Creek in 2019!
Llamas are:
Lost Creek Ranger Seedskadee
Lost Creek Ranger Ouray
Lost Creek Skookum
And the Fjords are:
We also said our goodbyes to Rocky Mountain Greymist
01.28.2019
More pulldown menu corrections and a revised header link section containing social media links and a link to our upcoming new mini-site for the Norwegian Fjord horses.
So that there are no header menu dead links, added new menu-type pages for subtopic-heavy information: Llama Behavior, Buyer Beware, Llamas with Special Needs, Working Llamas, Training & Rescue
Added placeholder pages ("under construction") where applicable — to help us find actual bad links.
Shortened the homepage and expanded the removed information on a new page: The ongoing story of Lost Creek Llamas
01.26.2019
Our long-awaited house reconstruction is now firmly scheduled for 2019. In the short term, it will be stressful and take away time from llamas, training and packing. In the long term, it will be an extremely good thing for all.
We will still offer some hands-on instruction during 2019, but the time slots will be restricted and scheduled around the construction.
Somehow, despite the above complications, the website corrections and revisions are actually underway. There have been some header (pull-down) menu corrections (bad links to behavior and management consultation) and one new page today: Congenital defects in llamas
08.03.2018
We had three excellent male babies born here this year all by Bull (Eagle's Nest' Americus). See Cynamon, Dunc'n and Carhartt's pages to meet them!
06.12.2018
We have both succeeded in retiring from "those other jobs"; now we are primarily llama farmers, trainers, and packers! Gwen left the USPS at the end of March, and Jim cut back to two days per week (by choice) at his job at the end of April. This has opened up a lot of time to accomplish things ... and we've been overwhelmed (so far) with things that have been waiting for "later on when there's more time."
One of the important things that has been waiting for more time is expanding our offerings for students. See our newly-completed services page (also in the navbar above) for information on behavior and management consultation, scheduling private Get Connected! sessions, hands-on basic llama handling skill-building, hands-on basic llama packing skill sessions and more!
In February, Joey Gold'n Heart joined us as a stud prospect ... and insane bundle of energy and diversion. We are very excited about him.
Three new male llamas were born here in 2018 — Lost Creek Ranger Cynamon, Lost Creek Dunc'n Hawk, and Lost Creek Carhartt. Visit their pages for all the details!
10.02.2017
We welcome three exciting new llamas to our herd!
• Lost Creek Cinder was born March 6, 2017. She has her mom's height and excellent Classic coat, and her dad's brains — can't get much better than that! We expect to retain her as a breeder thanks to the acquisition of ...
• Duke and Longmire, two yearling stud prospects whose packing-lineage genes are an outcross from our own stock. These two energetic Classic males arrived from Wyoming in late September. We expect to enjoy many miles with them on the trail and also anticipate offering them at stud — once they've matured. For now, it's all pasture fun and games spiced with brief but engaging lesson times.
In other news ...
Klahowya's sale fell through, and between Duke's and Longmire's then-pending acquisition and the fact that we were increasingly conflicted about selling her anyway, we are keeping her for our breeding herd.
We have a number of females bred for 2018 babies, and another Oregon breeder has an equal number of females bred to one of our studs (Troubadour). Some will be retained for evaluation as possible replacement breeders, but others won't, and once they're available, they'll go FAST. Jump in our "waiting pool" NOW, and let us know you're serious — we like detailed information about your and your set-up, and we also like to talk with prospective buyers during a visit to our farm. We place llamas with people they respond to and "sync" with ... not the first people with money.
Retirement from "those OTHER jobs" is drawing ever closer — 2018 will be the year!. We'll definitely be spending more time with our llamas and Fjords, and we're looking forward to getting into the backcountry much, much more (our farm sitter's bank account will benefit a LOT). Another focus will be finally getting the website all into one format and information updated as may be appropriate — look for that during winter 2018/2019. We will increase the number of llamas produced (and thus available for sale), but only somewhat — quality over quantity is still what we're about.
Finally, we're hearing more and more that "someone" has been telling people we are "out of llamas" and "not doing llamas anymore" ... and that people shouldn't bother contacting us. Apparently this has been going on for a number of years now, and based on the amount of inquiries we are still getting, it's not working very well ... but we have to wonder just how bad IS the problem with, um, "someone" and their llamas (and maybe their guarantees?) for ANYone to even feel the need to come up with that line. After all, we don't have a llama factory going here, and thus our sales numbers are already quite limited ... hmmmmmmm ...
10.08.2016
We've reluctantly said goodbye to Kokanee, euthanized at 23.5 years. Fortunately her decline was short and we were able to manage her discomfort, and we gave her lots of scritches (as always) until the end.
09.25.2016
Two new faces! Miranda and Fiona have joined the herd as prospective breeding females, bringing both mostly unrelated packing bloodlines and amusing outlooks on life.
08.15.2016
We welcome Lost Creek Ranger Arikaree! Our lone 2016 baby, now coming up on two months of age, is a brainy, well-adjusted charmer. Oh, and her paint job is definitely something else!
We've said our goodbyes to Megan.
After three additional attempts (and failures) to purchase a breeding-quality Norwegian Fjord filly or mare, we've struck paydirt in a big way. Welcome, Winny (registered name BDF Winifred)!!! Winny not only has an exceptionally pleasant, willing disposition and a fine working resume of her own, but her immediate kin are also the kind of working athletes with stellar dispositions that we seek. We expect to begin offering Norwegian Fjord foals for sale beginning in 2019, but first we'll be evaluating Winny in great depth so we can select the stallion who will best compliment her.
02.26.2016
Farm improvements — After seeing how much hay (and money) NibbleNets® saved us with the horses (as well as keeping their shelter area super-tidy), we began gradually installing them for the llamas. WOW!!! NibbleNets® have made our llamas happier and slimmer! Both equids and camelids spend huge portions of their days seeking out and munching wisps of forage in their natural state. Piles of hay just aren't natural ... and if fed little enough to prevent excessive weight gain, these grazers get bored-bored-bored ... and more than a bit anxious and uptight due to inability to follow their instincts to be busy eating. The NibbleNets® allow the same amount of hay to last MUCH longer, keep it up off the ground (away from mud, parasites, and fungi), and go a long way towards preventing choke (yes, aggressively-feeding llamas and horses can choke on loose hay). Although the horses naturally sort-of share their NibbleNets® (there's one per horse, but they prefer to feed together), we're also seeing a marked decline in food aggression among the llamas since putting up the NibbleNets®
For the llamas, we use the "Picnic Plus" with the smallest (1.25") openings; for the Fjords, we use the "Double Nibble", 6" deep, also with the smallest (1.25") openings. Rationing the llamas' hay is still necessary, but the small-opening NibbleNets® coupled with 24/7 turnout on bare-ground track paddock means we can keep hay available for the horses at all times — even the super-easy-keeper Fjords remain at a healthy weight.