September is a beautiful time of year. The weather has been completely mixed this year – we’ve had the first snow on the plateau and then HOT summery temperatures! The reindeer also look fantastic with fully grown antlers and fresh winter coats growing through.
We’ve been doing lots of free range missions to bring in the cows and their calves which is always fun. The bulls and cows have been stripping the velvet and getting a wee bit more feisty and hormonal in preparation for the upcoming rut.
The calves have also been given a name but as always we don’t post any names online until our adopters have their newsletters. Maybe by next month’s photo blog!
I’m running away on holiday for the last week of September hence the photos stopping a wee bit early this month. I’ve selected a few more on other days to make up for it though! 😉
2nd of September: Cassie heading up to feed the free rangers, Dante looking back at the camera.3rd of September: Out on a free range mission! Came across 6 cows all looking super! It wasn’t going to be possible to move them by myself so I called for back-up from Reindeer House. Whilst I was waiting for Lisette to get to me, Juniper and I had a little rest!9th of September: Christie and her calf both looking great! Christie is a fairly phenomenal lass – she’s now had 4 big beautiful boys in a row and has enough extra energy to grow a super set of antlers.9th of September: Found these three gorgeous free rangers on the road so took them up to a nice spot away so as not to cause a traffic jam! From L to R we have Borlotti, Shannon and Turtle.11th of September: The first two faces I see on the hill – what a lovely way to start the day! Morse and Dr Seuss.11th of September: Morven looking good after a couple of years off motherhood. She’s grown her usual lovely set of antlers and will hopefully run with a bull this autumn.11th of September: Flax and her calf.12th of September: Isla and Cassie feeding the calves out of the bags. We do this to give the calves an extra bit of food before the greedy adults eat it all, and also to get them nice and tame the quickest way possible!12th of September: Flax starting to strip the velvet (see her pic from the day before!).12th of September: Our regular volunteer Emm leading Cowboy and Mivvi back into the hill enclosure. 13th of September: Sika is 16 years old, one of the oldest in the herd. She’s never had an adopter in her life until very recently!! She’s actually very shy but in recent years has cottoned on to the contents of our white feed bags. This is her licking her lips at the very thought of it!13th of September: Holy Moley decided to grace us with her presence. She was out free roaming but popped into the enclosure with a bunch of other cows looking for a free lunch!13th of September: It was a busy day for me. After the morning Hill Trip I went out on a reindeer retrieval mission! This is the gorgeous Fern. She’s 17 and the current oldest member of our herd.16th of September: Torch’s lovely calf chilling out in the sun!16th of September: Volunteer Emm and some of lovely ‘single ladies’! Mississippi, Scully (who may be Emm’s favourite in the herd but don’t tell the others that), Zambezi, and Nuii.17th of September: Athens looking very handsome!17th of September: Calves feeding out of the bag at the start of a Hill Trip.19th of September: A hot day when you’re in your winter coat! Adzuki cooling himself down by standing in a bog.22nd of September: Christie leading the herd out of the mist. To her right is Feta’s calf and Beanie.22nd of September: Feta’s calf is a chunky lad – he’s a lovely friendly lad.
‘Here’s something to give you all a laugh…’ Fiona ambled into the office yesterday afternoon brandishing a piece of paper. It turned out to be a copy of the rota from July 2009, which sure enough caused much hilarity. Only five staff running the whole shebang? Just… just 3 staff working that day… in midsummer? Fiona – you worked 27 out of 31 days?! Why were you and Mary working six day weeks in the first place?
A Hill Trip 15 years or so ago, before tourism really exploded in the area.
It got me thinking about how different the Cairngorm Reindeer Centre is now compared to 15 years back – it’s a totally different beast; in some ways almost unrecognisable. Having started in 2007, I was away for the summer of 2009 (still attempting to have a ‘proper’ career), but the July 2009 rota looks very familiar to rotas of my first few years – fewer staff and fewer days off.
Pretty much the entire staff of the Reindeer Centre one winter… Ceris, Sally, Sofia, myself, Mary and Fiona in the front (cuddling hand-rear Grunter). Now it takes double the amount!
The massive change in everything here at the Centre has come about for multiple reasons, but the main one is the explosion in the tourism not only in the area, but in Scotland as a whole. When I first started we were very much a wee family business, taking a handful of people up the hill to see the reindeer daily. Ok, slight exaggeration perhaps, but looking back that’s what it seemed like, compared to the more professional, bigger and busier business that we are today. Well, vaguely professional anyway. Sort of professional. Actually, not very profes… Well, bigger and busier business anyway.
Gradually becoming a bit more professional… new sign replacing the ancient crappy one! North and Byron look relatively unimpressed.
Much of the increased tourism I think can be put down to social media. We used to spend hundreds, perhaps even thousands of pounds each year on advertising, both having our leaflets distributed over the Highlands and adverts printed in local publications. Now, we basically don’t do anything at all. There’s just no need – use it right and social media provides free advertising for a business. We operate at capacity much of the time now, with not enough hours in the day to run extra tours, so there is no point in attracting people only to turn them away. Scotland as a whole has experienced this huge increase in tourism in latter years, some places for the better and some for the worse, the infrastructure struggling to keep up. Anyone living in any UK ‘beauty spot’ such as the Lakes or Snowdonia will know what I am talking about.
15 years ago we had no limit in numbers on the Hill Trips purely as none was needed – and we never had any issues. But about 10 years ago we had to adjust this, first limiting the Trips to 25 groups of people (parking space being the foremost problem at that point). By the time we re-opened after the first Covid lockdown, we needed to limit the number of actual people too, as it was clear that overcrowding was fast becoming an issue. We settled on 50 people as a maximum, with Trips of more than around 20 people requiring two guides rather than one. I shudder to remember the occasional group Trips we used to do for tour companies of well over 100 people… with one herder. Incidentally, the biggest company that used to visit us – and had several groups on the calendar back in July 2009 – were an international student organisation who used the acronym ‘ISIS’. I think they probably changed their name at some point…
Some things never change in summer. Summer = lazy reindeer! Dr Seuss here is one of the laziest… Photo: Elke Mackenzie
Looking at the July 2024 rota, there are 13 names along the top. Most of us now work four day weeks, with the younger and newer staff on five day weeks (although it’s usually just a matter of time until a plaintive voice says ‘um, Fiona, about next year… I was wondering…’). Several staff now just work a couple of days a week alongside another job, so altogether there are heaps of us – along with a different volunteer each week, plus a regular weekend volunteer. In the summer holidays 6 staff work daily, plus the volunteer. How on earth did we sometimes manage with only three?! In the middle of summer! I guess we could at this point mention that collectively all the staff back then were a lot younger than the average nowadays, but even so… and also that suggestion makes me feel old.
But necessity demands change over time and bit by bit we have attempted to drag ourselves into the 21st century, bringing in bookings form and procedures the office rather than vague notes on a calendar; 1st aid training for all staff, and eventually an online booking system for visitors too. As I type Andi is in the process of upgrading our computers and digital storage systems in the office, as we’re at our wit’s end with them all. Progress. The new Centre building, currently half-built next door, will be the most obvious major jump forward, finally providing full accessibility to the Paddocks for all abilities. And a toilet for visitors (just the one mind, we’re not going too overboard)!
The biggest change of all. The old Paddocks and Exhibition……and the new Centre and Exhibition underway.
It’s important to make it clear however, that even when we move into the new building we intend to do our best to retain our ‘character’ – rather quaint perhaps, and very much a friendly, family run business. It’s a fine balance between visitor provision and ‘familiarity’ I think – bigger, ‘posher’ companies have designated staff doing designated jobs, but this leads to unfamiliarity between roles, and that is not a road we are willing to go down. The staff that serve you in the shop will be the same staff who look after the reindeer themselves, who do the office work, the maintenance, lead the guided tours… you get the picture. This was the case back in 2009 and remains the case in 2024 – everything changes but at the same time nothing changes.
When I arrived in October the first thing I noticed was the place was very different without Sookie as she would always greet me barking excitedly whenever I arrived at Reindeer House.
I went straight out to look for free-rangers with Ruth to make sure they weren’t on the road then went to the hill enclosure to split off the reindeer and meet the new calves and give them some preferential feed from the bag. Holy Moley was being very stubborn and other calves kept trying to get back through the gate.
Emm with Mississippi and her mum Holy Moley.
October is the rutting season and this year it involved the males Jelly and Sherlock who had their own females in different parts of the hill enclosure. The males get very boisterous and while I was there it was decided that Jelly should be taken off the hill and taken to Tilly at the farm for the safety of the other reindeer and the herders. After Jelly had been walked off the hill, I helped move some of the female reindeer around to put in with Sherlock. Kernel then came over from the farm to replace Jelly and was much better behaved for the remainder of the rut.
I was able to meet Winnie and Alba the hand-reared calves who were bottle-fed three times a day and remained on the hill. I was lucky enough to feed them a few times. They were very excited and would run over when we got the bottles out. Popsicle was thought to be underweight so we gave her a special feed and I had to give that to her and keep off the others who wanted to get into the bag. Another day we checked over the reindeer that had been with Jelly and took their temperatures.
Emm getting to know Alba.Alba and Winnie – both incredibly laid-back lassies!
Holy Moley kept following me around and Mekong kept licking my coat which was very funny. I had seen Cicero licking a tree as it was covered in lichen earlier. When Sheena brought the free-rangers down later we saw some who had not been seen for a few months. We were always moving the reindeer around and Druid, Danube and Mekong were taken from the Paddocks to the hill enclosure. Lotti, Isla, and I took them and I led Druid. Lotti was on dog watch at the front of the group. One really interesting fact I found out was that Danube was Brie’s calf from this year and she had calved on her own on the free-range as no-one knew she was pregnant and it was a big surprise when she turned up with Danube later in the summer. Luckily she was fine and it shows how tough the reindeer are in their natural environment.
Cicero enjoying the lichen on a Scots pine.
On one Hill Trip we went to the enclosure to find only 22 reindeer with 12 missing. We had to go round after the visitors had gone to see who was missing and found 10 of them but Lotti eventually found the rest of them and some had been “flirting” with Sherlock near his part of the enclosure. At times I was able to spend time enjoying chilling with the main group in the enclosure. It was lovely to see Winnie and Alba very relaxed with visitors lying down and falling asleep.
The free-rangers would often appear and on one occasion they all turned up at the enclosure gate so we had to move them away as it was not their time to be in the hill enclosure. Another day we spotted some of the free-rangers on the road so Ruth went up and we could see her leading them away with the bag of food to keep them safe.
Christmas sleigh training was well underway and we had Poirot, Druid, Haricot, Olympic and two calves, Danube and Mekong. It was only Haricot’s third time pulling the sleigh and he was as good as gold. The experienced reindeer like Poirot were showing the others what to do. They were warmed up by walking and jogging them up to Glenmore Visitor Centre and back, then harnessed up and walked with two pulling from the front and two at the back with two calves. We went to Glenmore Campsite and back and I got chance to ride in the sleigh. We switched the reindeer over and did it again.
Haricot and Olympic pulling the sleigh with Emm enjoying the ride.Emm leading Hemp and Adzuki off the hill.
A few days later we moved some reindeer around bringing Adzuki and Hemp down for sleigh training. It was their first time and they joined Poirot and Aztec who were the experienced ones who showed the others what to do. We went on the road to the Pine Marten Bar and back and all the reindeer including the new ones were superstars. There were amazed looks on people driving past in their cars but the traffic such as a bus and a lorry didn’t seem to bother them. I had the chance to be guiding the sleigh from the back and we were watching out for dogs all the time. We had to make sure we poo picked the path and car park afterwards and this was my job. A few days later with Amy and Cameron we took reindeer Adzuki, Clouseau with calves Darling and Orinoco on a walk to the Pine Marten bar. This was important to get them used to walking with a head collar on. The two experienced reindeer were showing them how. Again many surprised people in cars slowed down to look and it was funny when a bus driver stopped the bus to meet the reindeer and have a photo. I was walking at the front to make sure the cars slowed down.
Emm with Hemp at the back of the sleigh. Emm’s role at the back of the sleigh is to help push it up hill (although the front reindeer should do this!) and most importantly be the brakes on a down hill!
I was able to catch up with the dogs again and since we were last there Tuva, Tilly’s dog, had had five puppies who were all at Reindeer House and I was able to play with them, cuddle up and they all fell asleep on me. I also had a lovely time with Tilly’s grandchildren Marley and Hamish in the Paddocks doing the elf hunt and making antlers. The puppies were on a hard feed mix which we fed them and they were still suckling from Tuva.
A very important job – puppy sitting!Emm and five sleeping puppies!
There were lots of other jobs with Brenda the van full of food ingredients from the farm to unload it and fill back up to return to the farm with food scraps for the pigs, new stock was in the shop with rulers, pencil cases, teddies and notepads so these had to be sorted out so I was kept busy.
It was very, very wet when we were there and there was some heavy rain so much so that on one occasion there was flooding in Aviemore with the main road closed over the bridge. We had to delay one of the Hill Trips that day to allow people to arrive. There were lots of lovely rainbows when the sun did come out.
Emm had a very rainy week but being the optimist she is was able to enjoy the rainbows!
I had a great time as usual this year and it was so special to catch up with my lovely friends all the herders, meet lots of different people on the trips, meet all the new dogs and of course catch up with all the reindeer most of all. I can’t wait till my next visit.
This is a very silly blog, full of photos of the wonderful Brie!
Brie in September 2020. She is a pretty, pint-sized lass who usually grows petite antlers like above.
Brie is now 11 years old and is probably the smallest breeding female in the herd. But what she doesn’t have in size she certainly makes up for in attitude! She is very feisty to other cows and won’t take any messin’. The famous quote ‘Though she be but little, she is fierce!‘ perfectly sums her up!
She’s great fun to work with, and has reared some wonderful calves during her life. Cicero born in 2020 is one of the tallest reindeer in the herd, Beret born in 2021 is now a mum herself making Brie a granny, Sorbet born in 2022, Danube born in 2023, and now she has another wee female calf born this May and yet to be named. We did try to give Brie a year off motherhood in autumn 2022, but Brie had other ideas and Danube was a big surprise for us when they were found out free roaming in the hills together!
Anyway, I’ve noticed over recent years that I’ve built up a wee collection of Brie sticking her bottom lip out. I’ve not really noticed other reindeer doing this so I think it’s a Brie specialty! She certainly pulls off the “give me food, I’m sooooo hungry” look very well.
Brie in January 2022 with just a wee bottom lip visible.Brie hoping for food – August 2022.Brie with her calf Sorbet behind. Crumbs on her nose reveal she’s already been eating from the white bag! August 2022.Brie looking very scruffy in July 2023 whilst out free roaming in the hills. She’s mid way through the moult and has the tell tale crumbs on her nose again. Brie in August 2023 looking much smarter after moulting most of her winter coat out.A very soggy Brie asking for a tasty snack! Brie doing her very best “I’m sooooo cold, give me more food” face in March 2024. Sorry Brie, you’re not fooling us, just look at that thick winter coat.Brie in August 2024 with her bottom lip and tongue on show yet again.August 2024 with her new wee calf!Every single reindeer in the herd has a folder on our computer system full of photos of them over the years. As I was flicking through Brie’s folder I noticed her bottom lip had even made it on to several adopt photos. This one taken in October 2022 by Hen.
