s e v e n i s a j o u r n e y

I came across an unexpected spectacle of camelid behavior this morning. I was heading out for the 10:30 “is anyone giving birth” check, and over in the riding arena Jim was busily orgling and chasing Galadriel around. He tried to mount her a few times, but she was not interested. Jim is a wether, and was snipped years ago. In the past we had seen him doing the flehmen behavior, where the head is held upright after sniffing the dung pile, which is an intact-male behavior, but todays events were quite unexpected!

I guess he was getting into the “I am the alpha male” role a bit much, and started trying to use bits he doesn’t have any more. I moved the three wethers to another adjacent paddock. Looks like we are split into two herds for the forseeable future. We knew a split was inevitable for management reasons, we just thought we had another 6 months before it became necessary.

He probably started the behavior now because Galadriel gave birth three weeks ago, so is probably now fertile again. Until this time all the girls have been pregnant. The fact that he never made any such advances on Victoria can be taken as further proof that she is pregnant, or she just frightened the poor not-a-boy away.