How Fred Hartman Invented the $50,000 Llama

It’s a mild early winter day in 1985. At our ranch in the Alberta foothills, Fred Hartman and I are looking at a dozen female llamas ruminating in the pasture, their crias frolicking among them, while three or four young males nibble at the brown grass in an adjoining field.

Fred has flown to Calgary with a business proposal. “Don, how’d you like to retire? I think I can get you a quarter million for your herd.”

That was a tempting proposition. I was a 48-year-old hobby rancher and former academic who had been running a corporate training and development business for fifteen years­­­—and was thoroughly bored with it.

I needed only a few seconds to decide. “Thanks for the offer, Fred. But I’m not ready yet.”

Fred Hartman. 

Perhaps the only extant picture of him not wearing a white cowboy hat.

Bonded emotionally with our animals from the beginning, for more than a decade I had been deeply rewarded by breeding, caretaking, and training llamas; and more recently, by grooming and showing them.

 Barbara and I were now living alone on the ranch. The saddle horses, milk cows, brood sow, and 4-H steers were gone. If we sold the llamas we’d be left with 80 acres of empty pasture and a tiresome business, both grim prospects.

There were other considerations too. Thanks largely to Fred’s expertise as a livestock promoter, the market was developing in promising ways. As Fred's offer indicated, the immediate future looked good. But the middle distance looked even more intriguing. So saying no was easy.

The Llama Breeder's Learning Curve

Many llama owners were puzzled by Fred Hartman, a long established livestock dealer based in Nebraska. They bought llamas to own llamas. Fred bought llamas in order to sell them.

Like the rest of us, he seemed to like llamas, to be interested in them, to be involved. But his perspective was different. For us llamas were a labor of love; for him they were, like the Charolais cattle he had also promoted, a market commodity.

Although some livestock people had started raising llamas early on, many among us were city folks who had recently moved to the country, bringing their urban incomes and upbringings with them.

Their energy and enthusiasm were laudable and they were fast learners. But their initial ignorance—of animal husbandry, of agricultural economics, and of the wiles of livestock dealers—was sometimes profound. Fred understood llama owners far better than they understood him.

Chiquita, Queen of the Herd, with Barbara and Don

Competition Is a Good Teacher

As an experienced livestock entrepreneur, Fred Hartman created the North American llama market by bringing us together twice a year at auctions in Tecumseh, Nebraska, and Grants Pass, Oregon, to bid on each other’s animals and blood lines.

He sponsored competitive shows that taught us to start looking at llamas more expertly. Standing at the wrong end of the line, halter rope in hand, when the judge handed out ribbons proved to be both educational and motivating.

Breeders began to see the differences between just a llama and a good llama; between the many good llamas and the few great llamas.

As people became better informed, and as some acquired an itch to stand beside a Grand Champion in the show ring, they started paying better prices for the better animals.

Fred’s next step was to convince them to pay exorbitant prices for the very best animals.

Making Al Deutsch Grin

We were late in learning about the promotional events Fred had been sponsoring in the U.S. For several years Al Deutsch had turned up at our place every fall, checkbook in hand and stock trailer hitched to his truck. He paid double the market price for whatever males I was ready to part with, then drove away with a big grin.

We were satisfied too. We got rid of our surplus males easily and at a good price. We never thought to ask what he did with them.

That is how Chico, Chaco, and Alberta Legend left the property in successive years. In the early 1980's, in succession they won Grand Champion Male, then Champion Jr. Male, then Champion Jr. Male again, at Fred's big show in Tecumseh.

The tentative phone calls began. "Are you the people who . . . ?" Folks were trying to track down the rumor that Al had "a secret supplier."

Calgary's Wooly Willie, Grand Champion Get of Sire at Tecumseh

With Barbara and daughter Kate, showing three Wooly Willie daughters.

In 1983, having decided to get into showing ourselves, we unloaded a small selection of llamas at Tecumseh. Arriving on the circuit, we discovered our blood lines were well known.

No longer the hobbyist tucked away in the foothills in Canada, for a few years I was in the midst of the whole shebang. And from that vantage point I watched while Fred Hartman continued to create what became known as “the llama industry.”

The Day that Changed Everything

A decisive event occurred at Tecumseh. The Grand Champion Female was in the sales ring. Murmurs began to stir when the bidding passed $20,000. The muttering became louder at $30,000. Voices fell silent beyond $40,000. People seemed to hold their breath as the bids continued to mount. Finally, at $50,000, the auctioneer declared “Sold!”

Yes, but sold to whom? Well, to Fred of course, the guy facing us the whole time, sitting elbow to elbow and knee to knee with the auctioneer while he called out the bids.

Someone asked him why he paid so much. “Well, you know, my wife fell in love with that llama. I just had to buy it for her.” Not all of us were convinced. “Oh, Fred’s just trying to pull a fast one.”

But the idea that, back in their home pastures, breeders might have $50,000 walking around on four legs could not be dismissed lightly, nor without further discussion.

“Well, somebody else must have been bidding too.” (An expensive assumption to make at an auction sometimes.) “Well, you know, prices have been going up steadily.” “Well, it probably doesn’t mean anything. But let’s see what happens at the next sale.”

Whatever our individual interpretations of the event, we all went home and spent some time leaning on the pasture gate, looking at our herds differently than we ever had before.

Chiquita and her daughter Tieta 

demonstrate the meaning of blood lines.

The Second $50,000 Llama

Fred’s next sale a few months later, at Grants Pass, Oregon, sure enough produced another $50,000 Grand Champion Female. Fred was not involved in the purchase (except that he again sat next to the auctioneer during the bidding). The buyer was said to be “a rich guy from California who’s just getting into llamas.”

As at the previous Tecumseh sale, we knew how much money was bid; but we couldn’t be sure how much actually changed hands, afterward and privately you might say. I can report I never spotted that rich Californian again, although I've since been told that people did know him, and that he was at subsequent sales, somewhere in the crowd.

One thing was certain though. The $50,000 llama had become a reality in people’s minds. People started spending big money at llama auctions.

Meanwhile, Back at the Ranch

More than a year has passed since the Grants Pass sale. I had phoned Fred the week before. “Fred, we’ve found a buyer for our consulting company. You still interested in a dispersal sale?”

Now the two of us walk through the herd, grown to two dozen llamas. Fred inspects each animal, then writes down a number. 

Back in the house, at the kitchen table over coffee, Fred adds up his estimates. I have my estimated total written down too. We look each other in the eye, then turn over our numbers.

"I'll be damned," Fred says.

Only $3,000 separates our two estimates. We both came in at just over a quarter million dollars.

“I did pretty good,” he says. “I don’t know the animals like you do.” “And I don’t know the market like you do," I say.

Later, having made plans for a spring sale, we stand beside the open door of his rental car. “Fred, you remember when you were here a couple of years ago and wanted to sell my llamas?” “Yup.” “Do you know why I turned you down then?” “Nope.”

“Here’s what I thought. I thought, I’ve just watched this guy invent the $50,000 llama. I think I’ll let my money ride on him a while longer.”

“You sumbitch.” We shake hands, then he gets in his car and drives out the gate.

Fred and I turned over matching appraisals that day. But we weren't even close.

At the subsequent dispersal sale in April, 1988, in Omaha, the final hammer came down on a total more than twice the figure we had estimated. The top female sold for $57,000.

Barbara and I retired, bought a 50-foot ketch, and sailed away to the tropics. One morning ten, maybe twelve years later, I became aware that the passage of time had finally freed me from a frequent dream. 

We might be anchored, say, off the beach of an isolated Central American island, or tied to a dock in a South American city, and I would dream we still owned a few favorite llamas, and that they and their new babies were waiting for us in a pasture back in Alberta. I would wake disconsolate.

                                                                                                                                   A version of this story appeared previously in the Llama Banner.

Mothers of Champions. Queen Chiquita always knew where the camera was.

A Third Party's Memory of the Big Llama Sale

 HINTERLAND LLAMAS

(May 31, 1986 - January 10, 2005) Kay Patterson Sharpnack

Journey of a Legendary Sire 

THE CANADIAN

The date was Sunday, April 24, 1988 - the Don Ricks dispersal sale of the Royal Canadians at Hartman’s, Omaha, Nebraska. Richard Patterson and his nephew Jack Kelleher, Patterson Llamas’ llama manager made the trek to Hartman’s Sixth Annual Sale along with hundreds of other llama aficionados, in search of a special male to add to the Patterson program of 500+. (In the fall of 1987, Richard & Kay had purchased CALGARY’S WOOLY LOLITA (Wooly Willy x Carlotta), Grand Champion sale female at the Grants Pass Show/Sale for $41,000. LOLITA was tall, colorful and elegant and the Pattersons hoped to find a Wooly Willy male of equal quality.)

23 lots of the Royal Canadians were put on the block that day. Lot R- 19 was CALGARY’S FLASHMAN BELL ILR# 54890 (Wooly Willy x Chiquita R105.) WOOLY WILLY, his black/brown sire with a bit of white around his muzzle, (pedigree unknown) was billed as a “top American sire . . . born in 1978 coming from the eastern US.” Colorful dam, CHIQUITA R105 (sire unknown x Isabella Bel ILR# 64057) had been Grand Champion Produce of Dam in Tecumseh in 1986 and 1987 and was “Queen of the Royal Canadian herd.”

FLASHMAN’s catalog statement read: “What’s he going to be when he grows up? Flashman won’t turn two until after the dispersal sale, but he’s already taller than 99% of his species. He is one of only two male offspring of the dynamite combination Wooly Willy and Chiquita: together the Grand Champion Get of Sire and Grand Champion Produce of Dam winners at Tecumseh in 1987. The half brother of two great Champions, CHICO and CHACO, FLASHMAN is going to add color, carriage and a winning tradition to the genetic structure of someone’s herd.”

Richard remembers . . . “He was just beautiful with stretch, big eyes, and a frame that could run high hurdles - definitely an ingredient that would be quite useful in the Patterson program.” Jack recalls “. . . His on-stage presence, ears, size, long neck and legs just made you say WOW! The fact that he was medium wool became irrelevant.” The hammer price - $29,000 and FLASHMAN, (immediately renamed THE CANADIAN), was on his way home to Sisters, Oregon.

Purchase of THE CANADIAN created quite a stir. “Wooly” llamas were gaining in market popularity and major breeders told us openly in critical terms that he really did not fit in with the current industry trend given his medium wool and narrower base. What they did not understand was that as Arabian horse breeders, we had the feeling that he could be a key component for our selective breeding program. THE CANADIAN had the elegance, bone, substance, sound conformation plus an excellent free and fluid way of moving that we wanted to cross specifically on our heavy wool Dr. Doolittle, Chief Sitting Bull, Zorro PL and Poncho Via daughters. By 1988 it was difficult to find North American bloodlines without Patterson Llamas’ influence and, except for Calgary’s Wooly Lolita, his pedigree was seemingly unrelated.

Richard would say he was the “vinegar” in the salad dressing to be used more sparingly than some of our other chief sires. THE CANADIAN gave us what we had hoped for - adding size, substance, length of neck, and presence while reinforcing big dark eyes and great ears. The next generation of Patterson-bred “world beaters” included many of his daughters and sons, among them the males: THE ROYAL CANADIAN (sire of Tiara Misu), QUEBEC (owned by Victoria Miller), HALOS, PENDRAGUN, CANADIAN PACIFIC, TAMSURKHU; and females: ESKADRA and THE CAT’S MEOW (both sold to Tom Hoffmaster for record PT prices and thence, as part of his keeper herd, on to Michael & Linda Pierce where they remain), GOOD LOOKIN, MARRY ME, VAVAVOOM, MARY POPLIN, SNOW LIGHT, HEARTS ON FIRE, MACY, and CATALPA. I doubt that any of the above has been shown, however most if not all have champion offspring.

The true value of any sire is seeing his prepotence carry on from one generation to the next. THE CANADIAN proved prepotent for the phenotypic qualities for which he was chosen. These attributes may be seen in such second generation issue as CASTANERO (x Catalpa), 1998 ALSA National Grand Champion MW Male; SNOWME (x Snow Light), 2003 LFA Maturity Champion Female and ALSA National Reserve Grand Champion MW Female; multi-champion SIJAMA ZUMIEZ (x Vavavoom); and Dick & Jo Sheehan’s LADY RENA (x Macy) a certified master packer as well as a champion in the show ring.

His journey started in Canada. Most of his breeding life was spent in the shadow of the Cascade Mountains, Sisters, OR:

Patterson Llamas 1988-1990 

Hinterland Ranch 1990-1996 

Hinterland/Feather & Friends Farm partnership 1996-2002 

Justin Timm, Frog Pond Llamas 2003-2005

In 1996, half interest was sold to Bon & Cindy Burgess (Feathers & Friends Farm) and he traveled back and forth from OR to TX then CO until October of 2002 when the Burgesses took full ownership. Bon appeared to be a bit ahead of the times if you look at the breeding goals of today’s Suri and Collectible llama breeders. When Bon sold out in 2003, THE CANADIAN went to Justin Timm and traveled back to Oregon for the last time at the age of 17.

Justin’s words to me in an email dated 4/13/03 read: “Well . . . THE CANADIAN arrived last night and he is looking great! Watching him move is amazing. It looks like you could balance a glass (of water) on his back and never spill a drop. One very cool male!”

THE CANADIAN could not have come to a more loving and appreciated home. Thank you Justin! May his last crias this year be as special for you as those bred by Patterson Llamas and Hinterland.

As of January 2005, THE CANADIAN had 107 registered get per the ILR database. His get, grand get, and great grand get are endowed with style, good minds, grace, and athletic ability helping them excel in both halter and performance.