Lost Creek Teewinot
ILR # 277104
female b. 6-4-2009
Sky Rocket x Rocky Mountain Greymist
click on the photo to see more pictures of Teewinot on flickr®
Teewinot weighed 32 pounds at birth (a bit more than necessary!) and is growing well. Gwen has taken a shine to her ... Teewinot hasn't decided if she's up for being tied to a human yet or not.
Teewinot is but a little sprite, yet we can see she is the upgrade to dam Greymist that we have long awaited. She has inherited a strong four-beated walk and fine trot from both parents, and has been endowed with Rocky’s sensibility, mellow character, and heavier bone. The final kicker is … she is NOT a kicker, period. (Greymist has the most powerful reflexive kick you’d ever want to see, inherited from her sire.)
We’ve had several unrelated llamas with small umbilical hernias that developed a week or so after birth and then resolved on their own within a month or so. Much to our shock and dismay, Teewinot managed to develop a larger hernia. MUCH larger. Although we were initially doubtful that she could avoid surgery, the umbilical sphincter did indeed want to close, so Teewinot got to wear a hernia belt with a harness for awhile to give the natural closure process an assist and (most important) to prevent an intestinal strangulation.
Teewinot’s unusually high activity level is probably responsible for the extent of the protrusion (smaller hernias, such as what we’ve seen in the past, apparently can become enlarged in just this way). Still, we will certainly be keeping this event in mind when making breeding decisions — a bona fide inherited condition would preclude ethical breeding … at the same time, accidents are not hereditary, and culling an otherwise excellent llama on the basis of an unproven guess would be just as irresponsible (and indeed, tragic) to the already-too-small pure Classic llama gene pool.
We will be retaining Teewinot, whether or not we deem her genetically sound for breeding.
“Teewinot” (say: tee-win-oh) is the French adaptation of the Shoshone word for the Teton Range (it has since been applied to one specific peak in the range by whites).