CameliDynamics

As a farm we're always trying to improve the way we're doing things and in 2024 we began introducing natural methods of taking care of our herd and that included transitioning to a handling and training technique known as CameliDynamics. 

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There's an amazing woman called Marty McGee Bennett who has worked with South American camelids (llamas and alpacas in terms of domesticated species, originating from vicuñas and guanacos in terms of their wilder cousins) for over thirty years.

In her words it is, 'a collection of methods that represent the most positive least intrusive techniques for training and managing camelids'.

It's truly beautiful work. It's all about understanding their behaviour and why they react in certain ways and part of the approach requires us to pay a lot of attention to our own body language, movements and behaviours too. It requires complete presence.

The idea is that we move from the traditional method of cornering, grabbing and restraining to allowing the animal their escape route, slowly desensitising them to our proximity and helping them to remain in balance whilst we work with them.

Marty explains that alpacas and llamas are generally much more fearful of being grabbed and restrained than they are of the husbandry work we need to do. When we stop doing those things, the theory is they learn to stand calmly in balance whilst we work instead of trying to buck us off and escape.

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We began by trialling it out on some of our most troublesome girls in the autumn of 2024. They were under handled, nervous and skittish making husbandry tasks harder to accomplish. Within a few sessions their responsiveness to the technique and the increase in their trust showed us how effective and most importantly, respectful of their unique nature CameliDynamics is and so we rolled it out across the herd.

We thought it might slow us down and make things harder but in fact it has made us more efficient all whilst treating our animals with the respect and kindness they deserve.​ It's a much calmer experience for the animals and for us too.​

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The crossovers between yoga, meditation and CameliDynamics are huge; presence, breath, body awareness and awareness of environment are all essential to being able to use this technique effectively. This is a big part of what we focus on during our Alpaca Yoga, Being with the Alpacas mindfulness sessions and upcoming Camelid Calm sessions.

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In February 2025 our Herd Manager, Carly took a CameliDynamics Handling and Animal Assisted Activity (AAA) course with senior CameliDynamics consultant Victoria Barrett of Simply Alpaca.