Feeding Llamas

This is an intensely controversial and hotly contested area of information. Therefore, I don't intend to make any claims, but rather just discuss what we feed our llamas and why we follow this course.

Pasture

Just be sure that it is not inhabited by poisonous plants, or doesn't have trees that can cause potential problems in or near it. How can you tell?
  • Ask your Cooperative Extension Agent to check out your pastures with you. Reassure him that he doesn't need any special information for llamas. If a plant is bad for horses, cattle, or sheep, then it's probably bad for llamas.
  • If the pasture has even recently (and successfully) used by other livestock, then it is probably OK.
I have seen llamas fatter on good pasture (with no grain supplement) than I have those fed on lots of grain. If you improve your pasture, watch out for llama weights. We feed our llamas on more or less unimproved pasture and we supplement them with grain.

Hay

In the summer, we feed hay only to those llamas being kept in the barn (awaiting a baby, getting ready for a show, being trained, being weaned, or ill). For this, we buy square bales of grass or timothy hay.
Feeding alfalfa is definitely not in our feed program. It can be used to increase the quality of milk in an inadequately milking female during lactation, or to tempt the appetite of a sick llama, but other than that, we avoid it. There can be problems with calcium/phosphorus balance in alfalfa that can result in bone problems in the development of fetal or young llamas.

In the winter, we feed our pastured llamas with large round hay bales (600 - 1200 lbs). In our area, a 600+ bale costs about $20-25. One bale like this can take care of the feeding requirements of 3 yearlings for most of the winter. (We have a short winter in Virginia, remember.) We don't worry if these big round bales are moldy, as we haven't had any problems as a result of feeding moldy hay.

The llamas enjoy these big round bales (they like to bed down next to the bales and munch at their leisure), and it allows even the meekest llama in the bunch to get its fill of hay. This was not the case when we fed square bales of hay in the winter, as the less dominant llamas sometimes lost out. In addition to the extra labor dragging hay out to the fields during (or especially) the worst weather, the dominant llamas would take over and hog virtually all of the hay.

Grain supplement

We feed a ruminant feed. Some people feed horse feeds to llamas but that's a bad idea for two reasons:
  • It costs more (anything with "equine" or "horse" on it costs more than the identical product with "cattle" or "sheep" on it).
  • More importantly, it's bad for the llama. The horse has a single compartmented stomach, and has a different digestion from a ruminant. Horse feeds are designed for a horse's digestive system. While llamas are not true ruminants, they have a three compartmented stomach, they do ruminate, and their digestive tract is a whole heck of lot more like that of a cow, goat or sheep than that of a horse.
We have arranged with our local feed mill for them to "top dress" their dairy cattle feed with some additional requirements for llama health. This feed is a texturized feed, made up of steamed rolled corn, steam rolled barley, and soybean meal pellets.

It is about 14% protein. Some people consider 14% protein to be high for llamas, and likely to cause weight problems, but we have experienced little difficulty with this. However, we also feed a fairly high fiber, low protein hay to them, as opposed to a high quality hay.

This texturized feed is very palatable to llamas and appears less likely to cause "choke" than an entirely pelleted feed. We have experienced no digestive problems of any kind (e.g., choke, bloat, impaction, or colic) in the years that we have used this feed (since 1985).

The supplements we add are:

  • You only need to give selenium in selenium deficient areas! We feed so that our llamas get 2 milligrams (mg) per day.
  • You only need to be concerned with Vitamin E if you are also supplementing with selenium. We feed so that our llamas get 500 IU per day. Vitamin E must be given with the selenium, for it to have its beneficial effect and it must be fed at fairly high levels to do so.
  • Thiamine is needed mostly in areas with hot, humid summers. We feed so that our llamas get 250 mg per day. In addition, we have this in our feed only during our potentially hot months (April through September), as it adds substantially to the cost of the feed ($1 per 50 pound bag). (If you wonder about cost as a consideration, it is not a problem until you have lots of llamas. While llamas are inexpensive to keep individually, having a herd makes costs add up. We feed about a ton of feed every 6 weeks. That extra $1 per 50 pounds then adds up to a lot of extra $$$.)

You may wish to know why we don't get these useful vitamins and minerals into our llamas via a salt supplement instead. We don't use salt supplements, as we feel this can result in very uneven delivery of nutrients to different llamas. We have some llamas that just will not under any circumstances eat a salt supplement. We have others that will gorge themselves on them. This is also the judgement of cattle nutritional experts, who feel that the best way to guarantee an even delivery of nutrients is by feeding them, not by using salt supplements as the major vehicle. (You can feed a salt supplement, but in that case, you need to add the correct daily amount to each llama's feed dish. Ugh, too labor intensive.)

Another method to get selenium and vitamin E into llamas is to use an injectable solution (Bo-Se for young llamas, Mu-Se for adults.) However, using too much, or the wrong formulation for the animal can result in a fatality. On the other hand, there is an experimental project in Michigan where they are attempting to overfeed llamas with selenium. At last report, they were feeding llamas 10 mg of selenium per day, and still hadn't encountered any toxic effects. So feeding selenium appears to be far safer than shots. (However, a selenium shot can be a real veterinary assist to a sick llama, so don't discount them entirely. It is just that on a long term basis, shots are labor intensive (you need to give them every 30 days in the summer) and may be dangerous.)

Where do we get our feed (Llama Sweet Tex 14)?
Culpeper Farmer's CoOp
Culpeper, Virginia
[540] 825-2200
Price is variable, depending on the price of grains, but averages around $9 a 50 lb bag in the winter and $10 a bag in the summer.
Since this was written in the early '90s, major feed companies (Purina, Southern States, and others) have gotten into the llama feed business, so you should easily be able to find llama feeds and supplements in your part of the US.