Roaming freely since 1952
In the winter months, all of our adult male reindeer plus some of our cows roam free on the Cromdale mountains. Tilly and the farm crew take care of their day-to-day feeding but occasionally one of us herders from the Glenmore base will pop over to help. Here is a random selection of photos from one of my recent visits:
Andi
Elvis will be 16 this year, born on the 7th May 2006. His mother was Esme who was a really sweet natured female in our herd, who also lived to a grand age. Although he is a beautiful ‘Christmas reindeer’ Elvis was a real ugly duckling when he was a youngster. He’s now got old man status and is well and truly retired from any duties, but in his prime he has been out and about on our Christmas tour, greeted our many visitors on the mountain annually and won the heart of many through our adoption scheme.
I remember taking Elvis out on tour over a number of years and he was always a great role model to the younger, less experienced reindeer. He has visited Harrods in London, towns as far south as Cornwall and of course done many other events in Scotland, England and Wales. He grew a lovely set of antlers every year and still to this day amazes us with a great set of antler annually, even at his age!
He comes from quite a small family and there are no longer any breeding females left in his immediate family line. Okapi, his sister is just like her mum and brother by having a sweet nature and of course like most reindeer is very greedy. She spends all her time on Cairngorm, unlike Elvis who spends all of his time at our Glenlivet site either free range on the Cromdale hills over winter or down at our hill farm during the summer months. Okapi has to remain here as quite a few years ago she had an injury which meant she was unable to breed ever again, however, being so tame and friendly she is a great leader of the herd and often when we bring them in from free ranging in the mountains she helps us herders to do this by following very willingly!
Over the past year Elvis has started to look his age… and fairly so! When getting up from lying down he is that little bit stiffer than he would have been a couple of year ago. The stiffness doesn’t last for too long but I’m sure many of you can relate to this when getting out of bed in the morning. We have put him up onto the Cromdale Hills again for the winter season with the rest of the herd and will catch up with them a few times throughout the week for a feed and check over. Elvis, a few times now, hasn’t shown up immediately when the herd call down off the top ridge, however, him and Bovril (another old boy in the herd) eventually come wandering down at their own pace so we’ve learnt to save a bit back now so the other greedy reindeer don’t eat it all!
It will be a sad day when we don’t have Elvis around anymore but he has been a great ambassador to the Cairngorm Reindeer Herd and I’ve known him from my late teens and right through my 20’s and 30’s so he will be a reindeer that I will chat about in years to come so his spirit will definitely live on!
Fiona
If anyone is a regular viewer of our social media pages, you will have seen that there are days on the hill when the weather can be absolutely wild! Particularly during winter months, it can often be very cold and windy, with stormy blizzard conditions. Luckily this sort of weather doesn’t bother the reindeer in slightest, in fact winter is the reindeer’s favourite season. With thick winter coats, they don’t feel the cold until -35 degrees Celsius and have been known to survive down the extreme temperature of -72°C!
Some people may think we herders are hardy folk but there is no way we could last even 5 minutes on a stormy winter’s day without the right clothing. Thankfully as of this year, Mountain Equipment have been kind enough to sell some of their best waterproofs to protect us against the elements at a seriously discounted rate. From now on we will be wearing their clothing during hill trips and filming. With all our old jackets starting to come to the end of their lives, it’s nice to wear something that actually keeps us dry again. Our old red jackets will be retired to the muckier jobs! Mountain Equipment is an outdoor brand based near Manchester and it’s nice to wear clothing which is made for the worst of the British weather. Keeping to tradition we’ve gone for red jackets to help us stand out on the hill, at the moment they are looking shiny and new but I suspect carrying dirty feedbags will put a stop to that, all of my own personal jackets have a reindeer food stain to them these days. We have gone for the Rupal jacket and Saltoro pants as our waterproof top and bottoms which have been great during the recent stormy weeks and we couldn’t recommend them enough. Here is a link to Mountain Equipment’s website to learn more about them: https://www.mountain-equipment.co.uk/
For now we are more than happy to put our new clothing to the test during the rest of the winter. Hopefully there will be plenty of snow forecast to keep reindeer and herders happy for the rest of the season.
Joe
Throughout the year The Reindeer Centre has its core staff with a mix of full time and part time Reindeer Herders. Many of you will know us well, so we’ve got – Fiona, Hen, Andi, Lotti, Ben B, Ruth, Olly, Sheena and Lisette. We also have our hill farm contingent consisting of Alan, Tilly, Derek and Colin. We are here all year round seeing the reindeer (and other animals on the farm) through the different seasons, however we cannot manage all the work ourselves… that would be impossible!
Editor’s note (Ruth): not every herder features in the photos, please do not be offended if I’ve missed any of you lovely herders out! Check out this page on the website for more info and photos about who we all are: Who’s who – The Cairngorm Reindeer Herd
So we call upon seasonal staff who dot in and out throughout the year to help out. The parts of the year that can be busy are: February half term, Easter holidays then of course right through the summer with schools breaking up in Scotland first and English schools going back at the beginning of September. Although we aren’t so busy with tourists through September it is the start of our rutting season so we are busy with reindeer management. At this time of year we are carrying a lot of feed up the hill so it’s a reindeer herders work out! We usually have around 4 different groups of reindeer in various enclosures either running with a bull or the herd of Christmas reindeer and females we aren’t breeding from so plenty to keep us on our toes. Its busy through October half term just before we gear up in preparation for Christmas and our own Christmas tour which runs through November and December. We can all breath a big sigh of relief in January when we take a month off and close the doors to the public. We do however keep the office and reindeer management ticking over amongst the core staff.
Seasonal staff that worked throughout these busy periods in 2021 consisted of – Joe, Nell, Harry, Kate, Mel, Izzy, Colin D, Ben H, Dave, Manouk and Leonie. We even roped in ex reindeer herders Jack and Eve for a busy weekend in December… Once a reindeer herder, always a reindeer herder!
If you’ve been up to visit us in 2021 you’ll have no doubt bumped into a few of these herders both core and seasonal along the way. We are very lucky with our team here at the Reindeer Centre. Everyone works well together, is great with the public and of course fab with the reindeer. Every day we are learning more when it comes to reindeer management but we all take it in our stride and everyone mucks in which is the important thing
Fiona