Abby – Page 2 – The Cairngorm Reindeer Herd

18th December 20159th March 2024

Life on Tour

‘Christmas’ for us reindeer herders, doesn’t just mean Dec 25^th, but rather the entire period of November and December. After 7-8 weeks of (organised) chaos, hectic days and usually less than desirable weather, Christmas Day itself always seems a rather incidental event at the end of it all! While tour is frequently great fun, it is also extremely tiring and by the end we’re all ready to heave a huge sigh of relief and pack away everything for another 10 months. Come January, should one more person jokingly ask a herder which one Rudolph is, then so help them God…

Topi has a quick nap on my shoulder whilst waiting for the parade to start

While up to eight teams of reindeer are away on the weekends in November and December, the weekdays are quieter, and most teams return home. We have around 45 big male castrate reindeer who are trained to harness, four of which will travel to each event along with two 6 to 7 month old calves, making teams of six. So even on the busiest weekends there are still reindeer at home taking their turn to ‘hold the fort’, and no single reindeer will go out to events week upon week. Many teams go out only for a night or two at the weekend, returning home straight away afterwards, while a few head away for longer but 2.5 weeks at a time is always the longest stint we ever do with the same six reindeer.

Spider looking incredibly relaxed at an event

Obviously, being based in the Cairngorms means that most trips away on tour for a ‘long stint’ start with the long haul down the A9 and onward, so a network of ‘bases’ across the UK to keep our travelling time down is a necessity. Our two main big bases are in the Lake District and South Wales, but we also have three in the central and southern Scotland, plus another five or so in England. Most are farms, so the reindeer are housed in a large, airy barn or undercover yard while we herders have accommodation on site too, usually in the form of a self-catering cottage. This then enables us to travel much shorter distances to our events, and (like us!) reindeer require days off while on tour, so the bases provide safe and secure locations for them then.

Origami, Duke, Hamish, Tanner, Aonach and Fyrish chilling out at our Welsh base

We’ve been visiting some of our bases for years now, so our hosts are well used to their unusual winter guests!

Grass is far too rich for a reindeer’s diet, so while we let them get some grazing each day while exercising them, we don’t leave them on grass for too long at any one time. Our usual routine is to get up and to take the reindeer out for a stretch of the legs first thing. At some bases this involves a run on halters, but at most we can let them loose in a field and they will hurtle around ‘dancing’ (reindeer don’t buck like excited horses, but will leap in the air, spin around and bounce about!). Then it’s back to the barn for their breakfast, while we poo-pick, refill water bowls and sort the lorry ready for the next event. Then it’s breakfast time for us!

Run1 — Hamish, Origami, Aonach, Duke and Fyrish (plus Tanner) burst out from the barn, down the field…

Run3 — It’s always reassuring when they come back! We pop their head collars on whilst out exercising in case anyone decides to adventure a little too far, but for the rest of the time at base we take them off.

Run4 — After a few minutes thundering around letting off steam, they like to settle down to graze and potter.

Run5 — Stalking whichever one of us has the bucket of lichen is their favourite pastime

Aside from looking after the reindeer, base days can go one of two ways, depending on your team partner is. Should it be Mel or Sally (among others) then it might become what has become known as ‘boot-camp’ – an energetic day of walking or cycling. For the lazier or less fit amongst us (primarily pointing the finger at myself here), a day of pottering around local towns, drinking coffee and sight-seeing seems more appealing! We do however, have to help out Reindeer House on occasion, who will sometimes send us lists of letters to write to go into adoption packs – Christmas is a hectic time for those left behind at base.

AdoptLetters — Lotti, Hen and Abby on letter writing duty!

And then there are the events. They range from shopping centres to light switch-ons, town centre parades to private functions, and are a way of raising the money needed for the reindeer to continue their free-ranging lifestyle on the Cairngorms. Reindeer are a herd animal, hence why we never take less than four out together (usually six), and as they all go out to events as calves then they are very relaxed when we take them out and about again as full-grown adults, as they’ve seen it all before. They are great fun on tour and we always return home with endless stories from each event: how each reindeer behaved when pulling the sleigh, who fell asleep into their feed bowl, who kept trying to eat the tinsel on the sleigh, and who tried to eat nick a box of Celebrations from the Queen’s head groom at Windsor (stand up and take a bow, Fergus…).

FergusWindsor — Fergus… never a dull moment…

Hen

25th September 20159th March 2024

Cows with careers!

As some of you may know our female reindeer spend the vast majority of their year pootling about on the Cairngorms in theory not getting into trouble! There are but two times of year when we bring them into our hill enclosure and one of the most important is ready for the breeding season in October.

Our lovely ladies usually start turning up around mid August and us reindeer herders dutifully place them back on ridges day after day until we’re ready to bring them in. We like this time of year as it means we get to eat more cake… this year however we’ve had no cake! August came and went with barely a sighting of a female reindeer and then September arrived and we thought they’ll all turn up any day now (bearing in mind there are about 50 females and calves up on the mountains there) but again no sign. So off we trogged on several missions to see if we could track down some reindeer so the poor bulls, who’ve been ready for the rut for several weeks now, could see some ladies!

Eildon — One of our calves on the mountains

Things looked promising when I went on a wee jaunt up Meall a’ Bhuachaille behind the Reindeer Centre and found four cows and calves who we attempted to walk in. Things, however, did not go the plan and we had come to the conclusion that this year the cows have decided that as independent women they have the right to have a calf if and when they choose! We did however see an adder… who can spot it?

By now it was mid September and all was quiet on the reindeer front, every day we religiously checked the roads and spied at the mountains but nothing was seen. Today everything changed, myself and Andi checked the roads as normal and actually spied a reindeer… then a few more on the ski slopes of Cairngorm and the few turned into nine lovely ladies and calfies (eventually… they do so love making you call like an idiot when there’s an audience!). Andi and I often end up being completely unprepared and had no head collars so after a brief wait for the valiant Hen with a halter delivery we embarked on walking them in, pleased that we’d finally been able to get some cows in. It was soon to get even better! A phone call from Hen gave the news that another large group of girls had heard our calls and were enclosure bound too!

Cows and calves trotting into the enclosure

One and a half hours later we had 36 beautiful cows and calfies safely in the enclosure, 12 very happy bulls and finally reindeer herders who can justify eating cake again!

Cake — Now we can eat cake! (well, flapjack…)

Abby

21st August 20159th March 2024

A (very) short history of herding

Reindeer are the only semi-domesticated animal which naturally belongs to the north. Reindeer herding is conducted in 9 countries; Norway, Finland, Sweden, Russia, Greenland, Alaska, Mongolia, China and Canada. Most importantly of course our small herd here in the Cairngorms!

Eve feeds the herd in a winter storm — Herder Eve feeds the Cairngorm herd in a winter storm (Photo by Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images)

There are roughly 30 different reindeer herding cultures (i.e. the Sami in Scandinavia) with up to four million reindeer! (A few more than our 150!). There is often an intimate relationship between herders and their reindeer as well as husbandry, which, wherever practiced is often almost identical.

Reindeer represent one of the only domesticated species with which humans still live to their terms and needs instead of making the reindeer adapt to ours. For example, popping a reindeer in a grassy field prevents them grazing and migrating normally, which is key to a healthy and happy (reindeer) life. Reindeer herding is socially and culturally extremely important as each ‘group’ of herding peoples have unique identities and cultures centring on their way of life with their reindeer. Economically reindeer are also very important as meat and other products make up these cultures’ livelihoods.

Herd of caribou — Herd of hundreds of caribou

In the modern reindeer vernacular you’ll find two terms, ‘reindeer herding’ and ‘reindeer husbandry’ – herding is the much older concept which mainly refers to working with the reindeer whereas the ‘husbandry’ encompasses not only the reindeer but the entire herding industry: socio-economic issues, scientific research and management. As with many traditional occupations around the world the reindeer herding lifestyle is under threat from loss of pasture land, predators and of course climate change, which has an immediate effect on grazing.

As you may know, the Cairngorm herd are a family owned business and this is often true of reindeer herders across the globe where individual owners often work in co-operation with their families, neighbours or villages to care for their reindeer. There are around 100,000 reindeer herders in the circumpolar north today which is a lot more than our 7 full-time members of staff! Reindeer herding varies between different cultures and countries but the one thing which remains constant is the need for herds to migrate between summer and winter pastures. If you’ve visited us here in the summer you’ll know that at this time of year our female reindeer are up and away on the Cairngorm plateau where they find yummy alpine plants and relief from insects; they then return to lower more stable winter pastures where they find their favourite food: lichen.

Reindeer pulling a sleigh in Russia (Photo by Elen Schorova, used under CC 2.0)

Reindeer herding is not a 9-5 job but a way of life: here in the Cairngorms, our daily routine is dependent on where the reindeer are, the weather conditions, pasture land and the seasons. In fact, for the Sámi, their yearly calendar is entirely based upon what reindeer are doing during specific seasons. For example, early spring is known as Gijrra – The Season of Returning – winter is ending, snow is melting and the reindeer return to familiar calving grounds for May or Miessemannu – the calf month.

Vicky and Comet — Herder Vicky hanging out with old boy Comet

The lovely thing about reindeer herding is by working with these wonderful (sometimes ridiculous) creatures your work is not only focused by your own goals but it is truly dependent on the reindeer themselves and most importantly the natural world around you.

Abby

3rd July 20159th March 2024

The Calving Bet

Every year we reindeer herders have a little flutter into betting around calving time of year – the idea is to pick a reindeer you think is going to calve first and if your reindeer calves last you have to take an icy dip into Loch Morlich. As you can imagine this makes it all the more serious and some proper consideration should always go into picking your ‘bet’ reindeer. This year turned into a two handed contest between Abby and Hen, and it was never going to end well for one of them…

Abby: Last year (my first calving) I took all the advice on board, I learned about families who calve early, I checked out tummy size and I looked at udder size; and ended up with a female who calved pretty near the beginning.

You would think that after a year of reindeer herding I’d enter this year’s bet with a bit more wisdom and expertise: after all, I’ve got to know the reindeer pretty well now. However, I committed the cardinal sin, and chose a reindeer who I just really liked before weighing up the facts properly. A lovely four year old called Hopscotch, and indeed she was pretty rotund looking when I picked her but there was no sign of an udder, but I’d made my choice and had to stick by it.

Hen: Bets have to be in by the end of April, and this year I went with Lulu. I had dutifully peered between hind legs at udders, assessed general belly size, and considered previous calving patterns, and Lulu seemed like a pretty safe bet. Everyone else made sensible bets too, with the exception of Abby. We ripped her to shreds continuously as she was very obviously going to end up in the loch, and deserved to as well – Hopscotch (daft choice, ha!) was looking pretty slim compared to everyone else’s bets, who were waddling around huffing and puffing.

Pregnant cows — Checking the pregnant cows early in the morning

Abby: By the 30^th of April it all kicked off and the calving storm began – one by one the females started popping and one by one my colleagues became safe from the dreaded swim. By mid-May most of the females had calved and all that was left from the bet was me with Hopscotch and Hen with Lulu. Lulu was the size of a barge with an udder to match, and was like the vision of doom every time I saw her up the hill. I began to think myself very foolish indeed and resigned myself to the fact that a very cold swim was coming my way as there was no way Hopscotch would calve before an old pro like Lulu!

However, much to my surprise on Monday the 18^th of May Hopscotch was missing, I was all a-flutter and stoked thinking that I was free of the swim and off we headed to track down her and her new calfie. We were, however, a wee bit disappointed, finding her on the top of Silver Mount (which is a very popular calving spot) chillin’ like a villain. There would be no calf today it seemed. It’s very common for reindeer to go off and faff about for up to a week before they actually give birth and I resigned myself to fact once again that I’d probably end up in the water. However the next day the same thing happened, no Hopscotch, hopes were high until once again she was found and pootled back to the herd quite happily but by our afternoon visit she was once again gone… this was it I thought. If a female goes missing in the afternoon a herder will head up the hill at the ungodly hour of 5am to track her down and this is just what I did! Once again she was on Silver mount (a bit of a shock for my legs that early in the morning – this is why reindeer herders get through so many biscuits!), but she didn’t look quite right and upon taking her temperature I realised she had an acute case of ‘Man Flu’! She got a wee dose of antibiotics before I popped her in with the cows and calves. 10 yards later she went down and in my head my thoughts ran along the lines of ‘Oh my god, I’ve killed a reindeer!’ until she started huffing and puffing away… she seemed to be going into labour! I left her to it and waited with glee to meet a new calfie in the afternoon.

Hen: I had foolishly chosen this week to have a few days off, and was away from home too. A smug text message on the Monday told me that Hopscotch was away to calve, but frantic texts from me after that, trying to gauge what was happening, mostly seemed to go unanswered or got a cryptic reply that didn’t really tell me what was going on. I started to sweat. Surely I wasn’t going to be beaten by Abby?! Having been here for a year, she is still ‘new’ compared to me – I’ve been a reindeer herder for over seven years and have experienced a lot more calving seasons than Abby, I should have been able to sail through the bet with no problems! Towards the end of the week I started to doubt myself.

Abby: By Wednesday afternoon Hopscotch was acting completely normally and stuffing her face with glee and was most definitely not giving birth. At this point I felt it was all a bit cruel and gave up on the idea of no swim and as Thursday rolled around with still no sign of a calf I decided it was definite.

Hen: I arrived home from my days off to discover Hopscotch had had a temperature but nothing else, and all was back to normal up the hill. Huge relief, false alarm and all that, and I went back to teasing Abby relentlessly about when she was going swimming! I was stupidly overconfident once again that I was completely safe, Lulu must surely calve any minute, but reindeer have a nasty way of bringing you back down to earth and the ringing phone the following morning signalled the end for me… Andi’s voice sounded like she was stifling the giggles, informing me that she’d just found Hopscotch with her new-born male calf. Abby collapsed in relief and I cursed Lulu, Hopscotch, everyone else and to be honest, reindeer in general.

Hopscotch and calf — Hopscotch and her new-born calf Kips

Being as it was about 8°C at this point, I was given until the end of June to swim. Loch Morlich is only a few hundred metres from Reindeer House, but at this time of year consists mainly of snow melt, and I am not someone to throw myself into cold water with abandon unless there’s a damn good reason.

Summer didn’t arrive right until the end of June in the Cairngorms this year, so I bided my time and kept an eye on the forecast. I left my swim right till the bitter end, on 30^th June, and at least the dogs had the decency to come in with me, although everyone else stuck to paddling! I don’t appear to have hypothermia either. Or at least not yet. Maybe it’ll be slow onset hypothermia.

Swim3 — Sookie at least joined me in the loch!

Lulu did eventually calve, far too late for Hen of course, completely unaware of everything that had been riding on her!

Abby and Hen

15th May 20159th March 2024

An Epic Day

Reindeer coming — Negotiating the ski fences with ease

Andi and I headed out a few weeks ago on a lovely sunny morning to search for the free-ranging herd – we had a spy and there was no obvious sign but they’d been hanging around the northern corries all week so we decided that was the way to go! While we toddled up the path to the corries we realised that pretty much a year to the day was my first week working with the herd and one of the most epic reindeer finding days I’ve experienced so far where we both walked over 10 miles up into the hills and found no reindeer.

As irony would have it the further we walked the less likely it seemed the reindeer were anywhere close to us, we had a wee sit down and a planning session about which one of us would walk where and luckily turned around to see a rather large group of reindeer pretty much at the top of Cairngorm. This was great – we’d found them! However, it was half past nine which meant we had but an hour and a half to walk ourselves back out of the corries and up Cairngorm then back down again to place the reindeer somewhere sensible for the visit at 11 o’clock. Time was definitely against us so we tanked it back to the van, swapped our big bags of food for something a bit more sociable and, hopeful of blagging a lift, headed into the funicular railway station. The lovely people on the desk fortunately took pity on us and we got a lovely ride to the top of the hill, amongst the skiers and snowboarders, with the reindeer shining beautifully on the top ridge in the morning sunshine. Sorted we thought, phase one of our mission accomplished!

Reindeer sighted — Good view across to the reindeer from the funicular railway

Unfortunately, once we walked out of the base station it seemed the reindeer had had other ideas and promptly disappeared. We walked aimlessly shouting and shouting as we followed the path down Windy ridge and eventually we found the group hot footing it over to the Ciste side of the ridge. All were collected in dribs and drabs and we set about getting them down the hill on time. In fact it went amazingly to plan, the girls even made use of the lovely path down Windy ridge and at one minute to eleven they were all deposited out on the flats for the 11am visit. All was well for the day… or so we thought!

Reindeer following — Good girls following us down Cairngorm

In the afternoon we usually go for a second spy around the roads to make sure the girls aren’t on the ski carparks creating havoc and this afternoon seemed normal, the reindeer were out of sight and presumed to be up in the corries again. You should never presume with the reindeer though as at 4.30pm someone dropped in to say the whole herd were pretty much chilling on the carpark – not what you want to hear late on a Friday! Once again, Andi and I trooped up to move the mischievous girls who through a stroke of luck were following really well. In the end we walked the whole group out across the flats, crossing a few burns and getting soggy along the way, into our mountain hill enclosure which is right where we want them to be in time for calving starting in a few days’ time. At six o’clock we dragged ourselves back to Reindeer House soggy, muddy and slightly garlic scented from the reindeer feed. It was a long day but naughty reindeer ended up working in our favour and we had yet another successful epic day!

Abby

24th April 20159th March 2024

Vaccination Day

We awoke to a very damp, dreich day on the Cairngorms but we had a mission to complete, come rain or shine! Today was vaccination day for our younger females and yearlings.

Fiona, Abby and I set off bright and early as the first job was to locate the herd, all out free-ranging in the mountains. They were soon spotted, with the aid of binoculars, at the foot of Coire an t-sneachda but being so pale now in their winter coats they stood out very well on the now heathery hills, devoid of snow, so we could actually see them with the naked eye. We called them and they came a-running, food always on their minds! We then set off, sacks of bribery food on our backs, toward the enclosure and they followed along behind us. We crossed the Allt Mor burn which was quite high with meltwater and Fiona stepped over with ease (just like the reindeer!), whereas I ended up with two wellyfulls of water and Abby went off balance and ended up with a rather wet sack of food! Next was the steep climb up the bank and along the top into the enclosure. They followed us in no problem at all.

Leading in the reindeer — Abby and I and the girls, a bit soggy, at the top of the hill post-river crossing

Once in the enclosure we had to do a massive sorting session – reindeer from 1-3 years old as well as any mothers of yearlings all got kept back whilst the others were let free. We herded them into the reindeer shed in small groups to allow us to sort them more easily. Once sorted, we gave them all some breakfast and headed down the hill ourselves for a cup of tea and a warm up whilst we waited for Tilly to come over and give us a hand.

In the afternoon, we headed back up to the enclosure in the pouring rain, Tilly clutching her lovely pink polka dot reindeer medicine bag, which always amuses us as none of us are very girly! We then began the task of vaccinations for the various tick-related illnesses that reindeer are prone too, especially in the early years before they develop an immunity. The girls were really good, amazingly calm for animals that spend most of their lives free and wild on the hills. Most stood patiently while they got their injections, the odd one wiggled a bit but in no time it was done. Their reward was another tasty meal and we left the gates open so they could wander back onto the hills once they’d had their fill.

They obviously didn’t hate the experience too much as this morning we called them down from Reindeer Ridge where we had spotted them grazing and they came haring down the hill to find us for some more food. Or maybe they are just really greedy!

Mel