Yakima Valley Groundwater & Llama Information Day

The Washington Department of Ecology has appointed members to serve on an advisory board for the recently formed Lower Yakima Valley Groundwater Management Area in order to work with the county and agencies to implement strategies that will reduce nitrates in Lower Valley groundwater, and prevent any further soil and groundwater contamination. Committee members include farm and irrigated agriculture interests, agricultural scientists, citizen and environmental representatives, conservationists, the Yakama Nation, and local, state and federal health, ecology and geologic representatives.

To help people who may already own or are thinking of owning llamas learn more about their care and needs, a dedicated group of llama owners put together the Llama/Camelid Information Day. Niki Kuklenski co-owner of JNK Llamas in Bellingham, Washington where the workshops take place talks about the upcoming Llama Information Day.

KUKLENSKI: We have put together this educational workshop day based on an incident that happened in 2007 with the neglect of 41 llamas in a herd left to take care of themselves. After those were adopted out we realized the people needed to know how to care for them, so a group of us put together a workshop day and opened it up to the public. We provide shearing, toenails, shots - we have a vet talk on how to care for the llamas and alpacas. We try to give people the tools that they need to take care of the animals that they have.

The 6th Annual Llama Information Day is May 5th. Contact JNK Llama Farm for more information.

I’m Lacy Gray and that’s Washington Ag Today on the Northwest Ag Information Network.