No cause for a-llama in Midland countryside

It's early morning and the llamas are loping along the lush lawns, licking their lips after breakfast.

Nearby a rhea – a kind of small ostrich – struts her stuff alongside the guinea fowl and peacocks.

This exotic scene could be set in the foothills of the Peruvian Andes.

But these llamas live deep in the English countryside, right next to the Staffordshire Way at Enville, near Stourbridge.

Walkers along the country path are often brought up short by the sight and several have posted photographs and comments on the internet.

Llama lady Chris Armstrong keeps them on her 16-acre smallholding on the Enville Estate, alongside a menagerie of rare breed pigs and sheep, geese, ducks, rescue hens, a horse, Shetland ponies and a donkey.

Chris's morning a-llama call is at 5.30am – and, after a quick shower, she whizzes round to feed all the animals before setting off at 7am for her job as manager of Oakview care home in Bartley Green, Birmingham.

The llamas mainly graze on trees, bushes, grass and thistles but Chris also puts hay down for them and, in the winter, a solid llama feed, which includes corn, wheat and grass.