Barnanalnia (barn-a-nal-n-ia) noun: An obsessive-compulsive behavior found in some llamas wherein they will travel one hundred yards from the pasture, past three communal dung piles, to defecate in the barn.

This winter we have seen a marked diminishment of barn poop. Upon review I see three contributing factors to our good fortune:

·        while the weather has been quite cold this winter, it has been conducive to our llamas spending most of their time outside their shelters,

·        except when the weather is particularly inclement we are placing the day’s ration of hay outside the barn, and

·        over the last nineteen months we have reduced the weight of our most significant offender by 70 pounds.

The last item is particularly notable. Prior to losing the bulk of the weight, this llama did not like to venture outside the barn during the winter. She also seemed to be particularly sen­sitive to the cold. Since losing this excess poundage she has become much more ener­getic, she no longer appears to be sensitive to the cold and her personality is much less phlegmatic. She also spends much of her time outside with a consequent reduction in barn poop.

Z-Trak Update

For the new reader, we had acquired a John Deere Z-Trak (zero-turn radius mower) in late 1999 to help us with manure removal from our pastures. Periodically I have given an update on our experience with the Z-Trak for those who might be interested in finding a solution to llama manure removal.

Basically our observations can be summarized as follows:

·        It is not perfect ... but we would not be without it. The time savings is very dra­matic ... what took a half day or more can be done in 15 minutes or less.

·        During the months

a)      when the pasture has stopped growing,

b)      the temperature is above 25 degrees,

c)      there is no snow on the ground, and

d)      it is not mud season

collection results are very good and the ‘product’ is much like bovung. We spread it on a pasture that we have taken out of service so that we can renew it (our farm has been around since 1748 and the pastures are pretty    worn out). We have found that a fairly thick spread (1/4") does quite well ... we have seen mossy areas turn into grass producing areas.

·        During the growing season the collection process is quite different ... I tend to ride around with the deck raised but not locked and then dropping it down on the communal patches of manure. The height is quite critical    ... almost to the point of scalping the ground. The collection mate­rial consisting of grass and pulverized manure starts composting immediately ... I have found it rather hot after just several hours.

·        It makes an excellent general-purpose field mower but it can be overwhelmed by high and/or tough grass.

·        Wet weather can hamper collection suc­cess, i.e., the percentage of manure collected drops significantly.

Walker and Scag Power Equipment have similar mowers. If a zero-turn radius mower looks attractive to you as an aid to removing manure then I recommend getting on site demonstrations ... perhaps even having the machinery left for a day or two so that you have the time to develop the technique to collect the manure ... and to see if it works sufficiently well in your pastures.

Manure Management

We utilize virtually all the manure produced on our farm. Recently I had the opportunity to gain an insight into the problems faced by those with excess manure production. The snow accumulated from the various storms was about three feet deep and when I went to carry buckets with manure out to our orchard I quickly found that I was not able to move unless I put on snowshoes. Until I beat a path down with the snowshoes I had visions of a large pile of accumulating manure. This vision coupled with frequent requests from visitors, friends and others for manure have led me to create a page on our website listing farms which have manure available. If you find yourself in a position where you would like another aid to moving your manure, send me an e-mail (lynd@greenbriarllamas.com) giving your name, phone number, town and e-mail address. To see the listing page, go to:

Sources of Manure

As a final note, if you went to your encyclopedia to obtain more information on Barnanalnia, please note that this is the April issue of the MLLA Newsletter.