LEDUC, Alta. – Pam and Harvey Bakker changed their lives one day in 1989 when they attended an unusual animal sale and came home with a pet llama.
Harvey said he was working in the oil patch and looking for a diversification project involving an animal that Pam could handle on her own. They liked their first llama so much that within three months they plunged into the llama breeding business, buying two pregnant females for $20,000 each.
“We thought they were interesting: their curiosity, their alertness,” he said.
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The Bakkers, who come from farm backgrounds and live on an acreage near Leduc, proceeded to build their Kandu Llamas herd to 36 animals. However, it has shrunk to 12 since disease concerns restricted access to the United States.
First it was disease concerns in farmed elk, which Pam said affected llamas because they were classified as ungulates. Last year, BSE sideswiped the industry because llamas are ruminants.
The Bakkers responded by slaughtering the culls from their breeding stock and selling the meat for pet food.
“That’s in response to no market,” Pam said.
In an effort to find new markets, she is conducting a study into using llama meat as human food. Funded by an Alberta government grant, she has hired a laboratory to test the meat’s nutritional qualities for the human food market and expects to finish writing the analysis by February.
The study, which is a first in North America, includes samples taken from llamas culled for pet food, mainly males one to 14 years old, to test the differences in the meat at various ages.
“It’s taking samples of animals as we slaughter them for pet food and doing the scientific basis,” Harvey said.
“Even with pet food, the analysis will help.”
Pam said interest already exists in this area, with someone in Oregon avidly following the results.
The next step may be to follow up the nutritional study with a marketing feasibility study.
“We’ve tried it,” Harvey said. “I find it tastes like beef.”
The Bakkers say finding a use for cull animals is a fact of life for every livestock industry.
“Not every animal is cute and fuzzy,” Harvey said.
The couple is familiar with anti-meat and anti-animal farm protesters. About eight years ago, Pam, as a representative of the Northlands Farmfair in Edmonton, had to speak at a news conference countering claims that llama owners were being cruel to their animals by making them jump barriers in an obstacle course to demonstrate the animals’ agility.
Public relations has become a more familiar field since Pam became president of the Northern Alberta Llama Club, which organizes an annual show, produces a newsletter and holds clinics. The Bakkers also attend shows but recognize the time and work involved may not be for everyone.
Llamas are popular in the U.S., where acreage owners like the animals for their gentle, intelligent nature, their ability to guard against coyotes and their potential as a pack animal. Pam estimated 10,000Ð20,000 llamas are registered in Western Canada, with an equal number of unregistered ones.
Llamas are easy keepers. Harvey said they are smart and it takes them only two or three experiences with a halter before they realize you’re not going to hurt them. Even the Bakkers’ six-year-old son Joshua can halter and lead them.
The llamas can also be sheared for wool, but Pam said not all the fibre is good quality and it costs $26 a pound to process it into yarn.
It’s not economical unless one has a cottage craft industry and knits the yarn into clothing.
She said there is too much competition with cheap synthetic fibres that are widely available in department stores.
“When there’s a million animals in South America, they can mill and knit cheaper than us,” Harvey added.
The Bakkers also grow canola on their quarter section as a cash crop. Harvey quit the oil business and they recently ended a bottled water business.
For the future, they anticipate that llama fortunes will turn around when the cattle and horse industries do, because that’s when people will have income to buy their quality animals again.
