ive worked with both lama and alpaca and in truth, find alpaca "cuter" but find their temperments to be the same.
handle from day one, firm but gentle (treat them like a bully breed) they can be EXTREEMLY stubborn...
they also tend to both be skittish around strangers.
lamas are LARGE and can be VERY intimidating beasts!
Lama will hike/carry packs without a problem if correcntly trained
an alpaca would probably be a better "starter", alpaca have a better fleece and alpaca wool can fetch a good value to the right spinners...
both make wonderfull pets, both can spit like a demon, and moth have very similar tempements...
id personally try and find a farm with both (or farms with either) and spend some time around them.
both make extreemly good and agile lawn mowers also, they can get in the scrub and rocky areas that your lawnmower cant. but unlike hooved animals there not as hard on the ground...
a single lama makes a great "watch dog" for a heard of alpaca if you wanted to raise for the wool
i think the biggest probelm with llamas is they are such large animals but realy not like a horse, that people get intimidated and dont work enough with them.
working with an unhandled llama is impossible, they are stubborn fast and have a good range on their projectiels, but ive also worked with llamas who were handled from day one, a good nilf program and treated like a bully breed dog would be trained, and they are awesome, absolutly wonderfull animals who love human companionship.
an unrooly alpaca is of course much easier to handle than an unrooly llama as alpaca are 1/2 the size.
as a side note most get the 2 confused.
lamas are MUCH larger and have slightly curved "bananna shaped" ears
alpaca are smaller, have more wool and ears like the image above.
both have absolutly gorgeous big brown eyes with looooong eyelashes.
