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All farmers and animal keepers know the saying. It’s a phrase often learnt the hard way but once learnt, it’s never forgotten. It’s only too easily remembered though when everything, it seems, is going tits up…

‘When you have livestock, you have dead stock’.

The subject of death might seem an odd choice for a blog but it’s part and parcel of working with animals and therefore not something to be hidden, or never mentioned. I feel that in this sort of job, it could be all too easy to brush over losses, but sometimes people do like a little frankness and want to know more (aren’t I brave?!).

Reindeer probably don’t live as long as many people expect, the average age being around 11-13, so naturally there is a turnover of quite a few animals per year. As to be expected, we have years with good survival rates and some with bad, so therefore we purposely vary our calving numbers from year to year in an effort to hold the herd at around 150 animals. This way we control our overall number without ever having to cull.

But animals being animals, they can find all sorts of ways to turn up their toes before their time, and sometimes we do find ourselves fighting a losing battle with a particular reindeer. Though I must say, in recent times there thankfully hasn’t been quite such a dramatic loss as one I unearthed in ancient diaries of Mr Utsi’s, detailing a bull in the 50s who was found drowned, having become accidentally tangled in wire and then blown into a loch – such is the wildness of the winter weather here at times. What a terrible way to go, and an incredibly hard loss for Mr Utsi, especially in the days when the herd was in its infancy. A striking example of the fact that sometimes, accidents do just happen, however much you try to ensure that they don’t.

In latter years, ticks have been the cause of many a loss in the herd. Twenty years or so ago, we lost reindeer after reindeer until we got to grips with a particular illness that reindeer can suffer which is transmitted by ticks, and though we are on top of it nowadays, having learnt which vaccinations do and don’t work and how often they should be used (no veterinary drugs come with detailed instructions specifically for reindeer!), it does still rear its ugly head every now and then. Most of the time we treat the affected reindeer successfully, but we still do lose reindeer to it on occasion, and one such loss hit us particularly hard last autumn. That was Fergus, our big, handsome three year old bull. If you’ve followed us via our blog and social media pages over the last few years, you’ll have heard all about Fergus, hand-reared in 2015 after his mum died. From the underdog in the herd as a calf he had turned into the biggest, most impressive reindeer of his year, so his death really, really hurt.

Spring is often the most difficult time for reindeer, coinciding with the highest concentration of ticks. In spring, before the good grazing appears, the reindeer have just made it through the winter using up their fat reserves as they go, so their bodies are at a low ebb. This makes them more vulnerable to illness, with lowered immune systems, and it’s probably the most problematic time of year for them as a result. Into the summer and they put on weight, rolling in fat by around August, standing them in good stead for the winter months to come. That said, autumn can be hard too with another spike in the tick numbers coupled with a change in diet for many of the reindeer, females in particular, as they drop from the high tops of the mountains to the lower slopes.

You may remember that in 2018 we had live twins born for the first time in the history of the herd, but that in the early autumn we lost the smaller one, Hutch. We think his immune system just wasn’t strong enough to cope with illness after a difficult start in life, and very sadly his twin Starsky also died, about 6 weeks later. The curse of the autumn months, but in hindsight I think we can be pretty proud to have got them right through the summer when they were so much smaller than their compatriots – reindeer aren’t designed to have twins for a reason. We had great fun with them throughout the summer and will look back on their time with happy memories as, I think, will everyone who met them.

I can fully appreciate how upsetting it can be when people have enjoyed meeting a particular reindeer, and later find out that they’ve died. For us, working as closely as we do and investing a huge amount of love, time and effort into each individual, it can be utterly soul destroying when we lose them. In order to work with animals we have to learn to at least deal with death, but coping doesn’t mean we’re hardened to it – the atmosphere in the house when a reindeer has died is subdued and keeping a cheerful attitude with visitors is difficult. Ironically, it’s often on these days that a visitor will announce that we have the “best job in the world” …

One aspect that can make the loss of a reindeer even harder is then having to write to that reindeer’s adopters to let them know the sad news. In particular, my heart will sink when I realise that I have to let so-and-so know when it’s not too long after they have lost a previous adoptee, but this is the way that luck works, and sometimes it does happen. Conversely, when our ancient female Lilac passed away last year, there were a couple of adopters who had adopted her for almost her entire life of 19 years!

We always do our best to address envelopes to the parents of an adopting child in case they want to break the news themselves, and over the years I’ve had a few visiting adopters here at the Centre, small child in tow, gesturing frantically to me over the child’s head, while saying how sad it is that their adopted reindeer has had to move back to Lapland to live with Santa! However, it is easy to make a small mistake on a computer, so if you find yourself one day receiving a letter addressed to your parents but you’re in your 40s, for the love of God let us know because we’ve ticked the wrong box on the database!

Hen

Nobody can be completely guilt free in what they choose to do through life whether it be what they eat, wear or decide to go on holiday by jumping on an aeroplane. However, everyone can do the small things which will add up and help towards a better and more sustainable environment. Here is how we have started at the Cairngorm Reindeer Centre and obviously we hope to do more in the future.

Two years ago we made a fairly massive purchase at the Reindeer Centre. We got an electric car. As a result, a free electric point was installed at our centre through the incentive of getting the vehicle and it’s been a great success. We use it for dotting up and down the hill which is only a 6 mile round trip each time so it makes a lot of sense. We don’t tend to use it to go further than Aviemore (12 mile round trip) but mainly because the mileage can’t really be trusted with a full charge only giving you 70 miles. Although going downhill means you can gain some miles as soon as you hit an uphill, which there are quite a lot of in Scotland, you rapidly lose those miles.

Andi is chief of shop stock!!! She is always trying to source locally produced souvenirs and gifts for us to sell in our Shop. I make crafts and jewellery out of the reindeer antler, Andi makes fishing flies from reindeer hair, Manouk whittles away at green wood making reindeer figurines and ‘make your own reindeer’ packs, Ali sews together tartan clips and bows, the list goes on. Andi has also sourced biodegradable pens, re-useable coffee cups and tote bags which is great, plus free advertising when folk are out and about doing their shopping and getting a brew. We are always trying to find the happy medium in what we sell and offer so these are all great steps being made. Well done Andi!

Something you all want to know I’m sure… Reindeer herders are now using 100% recycled toilet paper! Buying in bulk from a company aptly name ‘Who Gives a Crap’ (look them up!) they are determined to prove that toilet paper is about more than just wiping bums. They make all their products with environmentally friendly materials, and also donate 50% of there profits to help build toilets for those in need. To date they’ve donated over $1.8m Aussie dollars (that’s the equivalent of over £1,000,000!) to charity and saved a heck of a lot of trees, water and energy. Not bad for a toilet paper company, eh?

Linking this back to the reindeer as a species and their natural environment, by doing these small things it helps with the bigger picture. It’s ironic really that man is extracting energy from the Arctic in the forms of oil and gas and here is a well-adapted animal in that same habitat adapted to conserve it’s energy. The Arctic is a ‘canary in the coal mine’ – the first area in the world to alert man to the affects of climate change and global warming. Melting permafrost, unexplained sinkholes in the tundra, vanishing pack ice, rapid freeze/thaw of snow and invasions of insects more commonly associated with the southerly climes are all effects of human induced climate change. It’s not only the Arctic being affected, all over the world extreme weather patterns are causing carnage to those living there whether it be man or animal. One wonders what the future holds!

So guys and girls I’m sure you heard it before and will continue to hear it again – Reduce, Reuse, Recycle! We’ve started here at the Cairngorm Reindeer Centre, good luck with your own journey.
Fiona

Earlier this year, on discovering how long I’d worked here, a visitor asked me what my favourite story or anecdote from over the years was. I was completely thrown – not only had nobody ever asked me that specific question before, but how on earth was I to pick just one thing?

But the question made me ponder, and reminisce a bit. Impossible to pick a single favourite moment, but there have been many, many stand out moments – and like for any job with animals, for both good and bad reasons. So I thought I’d tell you one of them, and will maybe write more blogs with further stories at a later date.

At the time when the question was actually asked of me, I went a bit blank, and despite a million different stories I could have told, suddenly the only one I could think of was a little moment from Christmas tour, several years back. I was on tour with Mel right down south and doing a ‘reindeer only’ event in Exeter. This differs from our normal events with the sleigh and parade etc, as it is just reindeer in a display pen for 2 or 3 hours, with us herders there to chat to people in the crowd. Much less work for both us and the reindeer compared to a parade!

It was a horrible day, absolutely pouring, so I can’t say either Mel or I were particularly enamoured of the idea of standing getting utterly drenched for hours, the sort of day where you know you’re going to get soaked to your underwear and the prospect of dry pants was a long way away (Christmas tour ain’t as glamorous as it sometimes sounds) – at least the reindeer have built in waterproof coats far more effective than any human clothing. We got the pen ready; straw spread out, feed and water in bowls, signage up, and then returned to the lorry to fetch the reindeer. The route to the pen involved walking along the pavement and then through a covered shopping arcade to the pen itself – no problem at all and the reindeer are perfectly happy in such a situation as we make sure that all six stay close together in their mini herd. There’s safety in numbers if you’re a reindeer! Just at the entrance into the arcade we paused, in the pelting rain, for security to clear a route through for us and the reindeer stood gazing around in interest at their surroundings – or more realistically, in hindsight, wondering where their pen and their lunch was. We were right outside a Costa coffee shop which had window seating, full of warm cosy people inside sipping nice hot drinks and oblivious to the world outside, until suddenly 6 reindeer appeared on the pavement, literally just feet away from them. We had big male reindeer Puddock as our of our team members (I can’t remember the others), and he put his nose right to the glass and breathed out, leaving huge steamed up patches. I watched a lady inside slowly put her hand up to the glass and put it flat against it, Puddock’s nose a centimetre away the other side. A few seconds passed and then we moved on, and the moment was gone.

And that was it. In real time just a fleeting moment, but one I have always remembered, and I often wonder too about the lady the other side of the window, and whether she still tells the story of the time she was having a coffee in Exeter and somewhat miraculously a reindeer appeared outside the window and then vanished once again. Years later I remember nothing about the actual reindeer event other than that little moment en route to the pen (and the fact that the herders at every single event across the country that day got completely soaked too apart from, ironically, at Fort William – normally one of the wettest places in the country).

In my head I debated telling the visitor on the Hill Trip about this memory, but standing outside a Costa on a wet day in Exeter, of all places, seemed so at odds with our current situation way out on the mountainside high up on the Cairngorms, on a beautiful winter’s day, surrounded by reindeer roaming freely in their natural habitat, that it didn’t seem worth the effort of explaining it all, and it wouldn’t have been the sort of the story the visitor was expecting anyway. But it’s a memory for me none the less and as Puddock has been one of my very favourite reindeer over the years but is now retired from Christmas tour, it’s a particularly poignant one.

Hen

Recently I got a new phone which made me look back through all my old photos before deciding which ones to keep. Rather than give you some of my best photos from a year and a half of reindeer herding I thought I’d give you some of the ‘worst’ from my first season of Christmas events.

Moose, Jonne & Rubiks on a big adventure…

Moose, Jonne and Rubiks were the only ones left enclosed, all other reindeer were freeranging. They thought this was extremely unfair, and took the matter in their own hooves. They decided they’d have none of it, and left for an adventure..

After the Christmas holiday, we shut the centre for a couple of weeks and usually let all reindeer out to freerange. This year however, we had a different plan for 3 of our boys. Over the festive season, Moose had been struggling with a quite persistent ulcer on his eye – we had to keep an eye on him and give him eyedrops (up to 7 times daily!). Of course it would be sad to leave him enclosed on his own, as reindeer like to have company. Jonne and Rubiks had already been free ranging for a couple of weeks, and every time they were seen they seemed a little bit thinner than before. This was enough reason for us to put them in with Moose, and keep all 3 of them under our close surveillance.

During these weeks of being closed to the public, we get to do tasks we otherwise don’t have time for. One of these tasks this year was to re-fence the forest area where our paddocks reindeer stay overnight. Moose, Jonne & Rubiks were staying in different parts of the paddocks enclosure during the daytime and nighttime, but little did the herders know that the gate between their night’s stay and the forest area was open!

More well-behaved, less naughty reindeer would have stayed put nicely, but not Moose, Jonne and Rubiks.. So the next morning, when we went out to give the boys their breakfast and daily walk, we found them gone, taking themselves out for a walk! Luckily, for the first time in weeks, it had snowed a little bit overnight, so we were lucky enough to set off on a little treasure hunt, trying to find our escapee reindeer.

Four herders set off on four different routes – asking any passerby if they had seen any reindeer. They must have thought we’d all gone bonkers. The theory we stuck to is that reindeer like to move uphill, so we did as well. And behind the paddocks is a nice hill we all love to hike/run on, so we figured the reindeer would as well. Five to ten minutes from the top I spotted the first clear hoof prints. Then Andi spotted them on the other side, near the top. Chris also found some, on yet a different route, also near the top. We all followed our own trail of hoofprints, and Andi was the first to find the cheeky boys. Chris and I soon caught up, and all 3 of us led a reindeer on a halter, all the way back to the paddocks. We came across quite a few of the hill walkers we had asked about sightings before, thankfully taking away their concerns about our sanity.

It was past midday when we got back to the centre. The boys had had a blast, and to be honest, so had we. We considered “accidentally” leaving the gate open again, but decided against it as it would appear too much of a coincidence (or stupidity) to do so again. We just accepted that we all had a lovely day, and that it was a one-off! After some more time back in the enclosure recovering Moose, Jonne & Rubiks got what they wanted in the end, and are currently freeranging in the Cromdale hills.

Manouk

In May 2018 a male calf was born in our Reindeer Enclosure. His mother Ladybird was happy and attentive. He would later be called Bond. He and his mother left the enclosure a few weeks later bound for the tops of the hills and away from the heat of the coming summer.

The pair was seen together a few times in the summer. Bond was progressing fine and enjoying being a calf in the Cairngorms.

In the autumn, as always the reindeer came down from the tops of mountains to the lower pastures. I was out looking for them one morning and spotted a large group up on the ski road. I led them down towards the Allt Mor and over Utsi’s Bridge keeping them interested all along with a bag of treats. This time of year we are always keen to see how the calves have got on so I was checking the group for any calves. I spied just one in this group, very small and without any antlers. Usually a calf will have grown a small set of antlers in their first summer. While I walk I try and identify the calf’s mother, but it’s not obvious which female is his mother! He darts around the whole group and gets bunted away by several females. Where is his mother? By a process of elimination we identify him as Bond and indeed his mother Ladybird in missing. It is very rare for a four month old calf to be without its mother. He was very small for his age but he was in perfect health. We thought he must have been without his mother’s milk for some time. Reindeer calves are extremely hardy and are capable of grazing as soon as a few weeks after birth.
Weeks passed and we began to fear the worst about the whereabouts of Ladybird. Until one morning I was out again and spied a group and was relieved to see Ladybird amongst them. I had images like in the movies of long lost relatives reunited but it was not to be. There was no embrace, no high fives. They were often in the same group but would not stick tightly together like other cows and calves. Bond had ‘roughed it’ on his own and that was how it was going to stay. Ladybird’s milk had dried out so their bond was broken.

Bond is still smaller than the other calves but makes up for it in gusto. He is often one for the first to kick at the bag of feed, but does so gently. I think to make it on your own you must be stoic and gentle if at times a little pushy.

We think around August Bond and Ladybird must have become separated. Dogs can sometimes chase our reindeer and can force a group to split. We are looking forward to watching Bond’s progress and Ladybird is doing fine also.
Dave

I suspect it’s definitely my turn to write a blog and Chris has been very polite and not pestering me but it’s definitely in the back of my mind so I’ll give you a wee sum up of Christmas.

As always Christmas went very smoothly in 2018. We covered the length and breadth of the country with our furthest north event in Lairg and our furthest south event in Truro. On our busiest weekends we had eight teams out all consisting of 4-6 reindeer and 2 herders. No weekend for me was the same, I had different reindeer, different team mates and I found myself in as far south as Essex and as far north as Tain and Dingwall. I also flew home (not by reindeer and sleigh!) from the depths of the south at one point as Leonie (fellow reindeer herder) swapped places with me. My first weekend away was with Joe and Sheena. They were in training, learning the ropes for the rest of the season. We had an absolute ball and it was nice for them to experience another part of the Reindeer Company having worked up here in the highlands for so long with the reindeer. The three of us all had hoarse voices when we got home from all the singing in the cab of the lorry. The following week was my long drive south, in what felt like the slowest lorry. Olly joined me as far as the Lakes then Eve jumped in there and we headed to the far south covering events south of London over the Saturday and Sunday. We stayed with friends of ours who have a deer farm down there and had some lovely mornings exercising the reindeer and doing a spot of extra training with the team. Leonie then flew south, joined Eve and that team of reindeer while I flew back north. Spending too much time down south isn’t really my cup of tea anymore; it’s nice to be back on home soil! The following weekend I was with real old timer Colin Delap. When I was a kid Colin lived and worked here so is like a brother to me. Having lived in Australia for over ten years he is now back in Scotland and dots in and out helping us out at busy times of year… i.e. Christmas! We did some more local Scottish events that weekend which was nice. I have to say (with some exceptions of course) the Scottish events are much more hospitable than the events down south. There is always tea/coffee and food on tap… Hint Hint! ?

The next weekend was completely different to the usual. With Bobby my buddy from the Everest marathon around for a couple of months, Tom (another Everest marathon friend) came to visit us. Tom could only come over on the weekend which meant if he wanted to spend time with us he had to work! He took it all on board and between him and Mo (the reindeer) they had these events down to a T! As a bit of back up, Ruth (ex-herder) joined us for the events as an extra pair of hands as she lived fairly local to them so the four of us had a great time. The following weekend I headed off with Kate who was also taking part in Christmas for her first year. She had already been out with other herders so knew the drill by this point. We had world famous fish and chips in Anstruther, hung out with the posh students of St Andrews and did the longest parade through Linwood. By this point it was getting quite close to Christmas. My next weekend was away with Bobby. But this time there was no Ruth or Tom to help out so instead I took a ‘bomb proof’ reindeer team. In fact Bobby had done the least amount of events out of the whole team, however he took it all in his stride. We joked as we were getting close to our event that the parade will probably all be uphill and he’d have to push the sleigh the whole way… Well we shouldn’t have joked because it was about 1 mile of uphill. Poor Bobby had a quick lesson on pushing the sleigh while I walked merrily at the front leading the two reindeer ‘pulling’ the sleigh and the reindeer at the back plodded along. Ach, Bobby does marathons all over the world, it’ll just go towards his training ?

The final days running up to Christmas I dotted back and forth from the farm, doing local events at schools, nurseries and hotels… basically trying to avoid Christmas Fun at the Cairngorm Reindeer Centre. These guys have got it all under control and having organised the events side of Christmas I didn’t need to be involved with Christmas fun as well. I’m clueless when it came to Christmas fun so I was better off keeping out of their hair. Chris finished off Christmas with me doing Christmas Eve and Christmas day round the final events. We also had youngest herders Oscar and Tilly (Colin Delap’s children) join us on Christmas day. They were leading reindeer and sitting in the sleigh, making sure we were all doing the right jobs of course. It reminds me a lot of when I was a child because myself and Alex would have to join mum and dad on Christmas day going round the local hotels before heading home to celebrate Christmas itself. I wouldn’t know Christmas any other way and wouldn’t have it any other way so delighted to see Oscar and Tilly also getting involved because it is such a great way of life working with the reindeer.

Fiona