Photo blog: Winter free-rangers

In the winter months, all of our adult male reindeer plus some of our cows roam free on the mountains over near Glenlivet. 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:

Cicero and Slioch
Butter, Cicero and Slioch
Legume
Anster, Emmental, Hemp, Dr Seuss and Boris
Lupin
Old lad Strudel
Jonne, Mangetout, Bourbon and Fava
Spy, Morse, and his granny Pavlova
Rubiks, Addax, Boris, Arta, Aztec, Cheer, Diamond (and Tilly in the background!)
Druid the poser!
Jelly, Kiruna and Stenoa
Spy and Diamond
Bingo and wee Cannellini, with Lulu to the right
LX

Andi

All the colours of the rainbow (Part two)

Following on from my previous blog about reindeer coloration, I thought I’d highlight some of the funky face patterns in our herd today. White face markings are super helpful at aiding us in identification of the reindeer, as they don’t change much throughout the year (or their lives). Though they can be harder to make out when the reindeer are in their late winter coats, as they are less distinct.

Addax with her calf Parmesan

Anster showing off his white nose tip!

Boris with his patchy white face and squiffy nose

Cheer has one of the whitest faces in the herd.

Christie with her white “smile”

Merida with a white hourglass, followed by her calf Dr Seuss with his striking white face.

Gloriana’s mark makes us think of the Joker!

Wee Hemp has a speckly nose and white spot on his forehead.

Jonne with his yin-yang white nose

Oatcake has random splodges all over

In winter, Ochil’s markings are less noticeable.

Spartan looks like he’s dipped his nose in white paint!

Svalbard showing off his white nose and forehead.

Texel has a white face with two darker dots.

Andi

A Tale of Two Boris’s

Earlier this year I wrote about the two Boris’s, our reindeer Boris and the PM Boris Johnson. Well, in April both have made similar news, in one way or another. Boris Johnson contracted Covid-19 and was hospitalised and ridiculously our reindeer Boris also fell ill around the same time!

Boris as he normally looks

Thankfully for reindeer they cannot contract Covid-19 but they are susceptible to various parasitic diseases and stomach upsets. In the case of reindeer Boris he showed the symptoms of a sore stomach, which led him to lose his appetite. That is never a good sign in a reindeer and is often linked to a low temperature because the body is ‘shutting down’. Boris didn’t even fancy some of his favourite food lichen. He was in a bad place.

Boris not looking too enthusiastic for my lichen offering

When I first found him unwell, he was lying away from the herd, on his own, always a sure sign a reindeer is poorly. I encouraged him onto his feet and led him across the hill to a small enclosure, beside the shed. This would be where he would stay until he got better. Although reindeer are normally very social animals and want to be with the herd, in Boris’s case he was happy to be alone.

Poor Boris!

Intensive Care Unit for a reindeer is a bit different to where PM Boris ended up, but for a while it seemed as if the outcome could go either way. Thankfully though both Boris’s turned a corner and recovered and ours has never looked back – his antlers have begun to grow again (antlers are the first thing to stop growing when a reindeer is ill) and he is back to his old self, wonky-nosed, very friendly and very greedy.

Tilly

In all his glory! Wonky nose and all…

Weather the Storm

As everyone knows all too well, these are worrying and testing times for all and my heart goes out to anyone reading my blog. With the latest ‘call to arms’ by the government we really must all help to slow the spread of the coronavirus that is sweeping the world.

Nobody is immune from this, young or old, but some people will sadly be more susceptible to the symptoms and it is these people that our thoughts need to be with as their lives depend on all of us acting sensibly and not selfishly.

But we must all stay positive and work our way through the crisis and although this is only a part analogy I would like to think, for myself anyway, that we will ‘weather the storm’ like a reindeer.

Reindeer wait out a blizzard, always facing into the weather.

In blizzard conditions reindeer just hunker down. Face the wind to keep their hair flat, trapping air in their coat and so helping to not lose heat. Reindeer will then lie and wait for the storm to pass. For us all these testing times will eventually pass and in the meantime we must all ‘hunker down’.

Coated in snow as they hunker down, each with their own bubble of personal space.

Interestingly although reindeer are a strongly herding animal, gregarious like people they do have a social distance that they like to maintain whether they are lying down or up grazing. They don’t ‘huddle like penguins’ but they enjoy each others company at a distance. So maybe think of the reindeer when you are out and about, keep your distance (at least 2 metres) and this too will help to slow down the transmission of the virus.

After the storm

As many of you know when we name the calves born each year we choose a theme and the name of each calf (there are exceptions!) has an association with that theme. The association is sometimes quite tenuous but that makes it all the more fun and challenging to match a name to a reindeer!

2012 was an exciting year, with the Olympics in London, the Queens Silver Jubilee and indeed our own silver anniversary. May 2012 was 60 years since the reindeer were successfully brought back to Scotland, by Swedish reindeer herder, Mikel Utsi. So with that in mind we thought 2012 and 60 years would make a good theme for the calves born. Olympic, Gloriana, Duke and LX are some of our reindeer who were born that year.

Introducing the wonder that is Boris!

One of the male calves born that year, was born with a wonky nose, which made him look slightly different from the rest. In 2012, Boris Johnson was the Mayor of London and oversaw the Olympics so we called our funny looking reindeer Boris!

To this day Boris still looks different to the other ‘straight nosed’ reindeer, indeed at a Christmas event a couple of years ago in Huntly, a young lad was heard to say, “That reindeer has got a nose like a banana!” Now I’m not saying Boris Johnson has a squint nose, but he does seem to like to look ‘different’.

Our Boris just chilling on the free-range last week, a bit less on his plate than the other Boris has…

Anyway I hope my wee story about ‘Boris the wonky nosed reindeer’ has put a smile on your faces and maybe even our Prime Minister’s face during these dreadful times.

Maybe this Christmas we could be singing ‘Boris the Wonky-nosed reindeer had a very funny nose’, instead of Rudolph with his red, shiny nose!

I’m humming it already!

Tilly

Quirky Reindeer! (part two)

For part two of my Quirky reindeer feature, it’s the boys turn.  Here’s a link to the girls in part one if you missed it last month.

Quirky Reindeer! (part one)

Boris:

Mr Wonky Nose was born a little bit squint. From when he was a calf Boris has always had a slightly wonky nose. Apparently its from when he was growing in the womb he must have been pushed up against one side, only allowing the other side to grow normally. This has in no way affected him in a negative way, he’s just not the prettiest of reindeer. Though I know lots of people who would argue otherwise so I think in this case beauty is in the eye of the beholder! We have one other reindeer in the herd with a slightly wonky nose and his name is Addja. He joined us from Sweden in 2004 and is now the oldest male in the herd so this shows there is no negative implication.

Boris the boomerang nose

Atlantic:

Where most of my ‘Quirky Reindeer’ stories are of reindeer who have been born with something different, Atlantic fits into this story from something that happened to him a few years ago. He has always been one of the biggest reindeer in his year, growing lovely antlers and always in fantastic condition. Two years ago, while out on the winter free range on the Cromdale Hills we were catching up and checking the herd and found Atlantic with a very sore foot. It was so sore he couldn’t put any weight on it at all and he was going around on three legs. We immediately took him off the hill to our farm to treat as we didn’t want to risk losing him out there. The vet came numerous times to check him over, we administered various different antibiotics and cleaned his foot trying to get rid of the infection, however, the infection was so bad and right up in the joint of his toe of one of his front hooves that nothing was working. Having done our best his foot still wasn’t getting better so our local vet suggested we remove his toe. He said he has done this on cattle before and being cloven hooved (two toes per foot) they get by fine with just one toe. So it was decided, we would remove one of Atlantics toes and he has never looked back. In 2017 he was one of our main breeding bulls and he remains one of the biggest in his year. It just shows how animals, and humans, can adapt to a new situation and their quality of life doesn’t need to change.

Merrick:

As a calf Merrick came back from free ranging on the Cairngorms with his mother, Nepal. The calves only have very small antlers at that age and in Merrick’s case he only had a little stump on top of his head. It wasn’t until a year later, when they grow their antlers between March and August that we realised Merrick’s quirk! He only grew one antler! We have seen this before but only in female reindeer, never in the male reindeer. In fact Dixie a 12 year old female only grows one antler and also Brimick, a female reindeer the same age as Merrick only grows one antler as well as reindeer from the past – Ferrari, Cherry and Walnut. This is the first time we have seen this in a male and now he is 3 years old he looks rather silly just growing one antler. The female reindeer don’t grow antlers quite as big as the males so who knows what size it will get to. Will it only grow the same size as a normal antler or will the growth of two antlers go into the one… We have no idea?!?! Even though he grows just the one we still see him tapping the top of head where the other antler should grow so maybe one day, if he taps enough, he might grow another antler… Watch this space!

One antlered Merrick

Starsky and Hutch:

No doubt you will all know about the twins by now and how rare it is within reindeer to have twins. In May 2018 we had our first pair of surviving twins, Starsky and Hutch. Their mother, Lulu, was an older female and seemed to take them on no bother at all. Like human twins, although they looked quite similar their characters were completely different from one another – this isn’t something I can necessarily describe in writing but when us herders spend everyday with them and we get to know their characters inside out we can tell that the two of them were very different. Sadly we didn’t get the many years of enjoying them together as we lost Hutch very recently, at 4 months old, but it was first for the Cairngorm Reindeer Herd and very rare in reindeer herds across the world. Our attention will now be focused on looking after Starsky.

Mid walk pause for a little browsing

Fiona

Boris: a reindeer of dubious distinction

If you’ve visited us in the last couple of years and met Boris up in the hill enclosure, there’s every possibility that he was the reindeer that left the strongest impression on you. However, he’s not, shall we say, our finest specimen in the herd. He’s not particularly big, nor does he grow the most impressive antlers, but he is, without even a shadow of doubt, the ugliest reindeer in the entire Cairngorm herd (if you’ve not met him, have a good long look at the photos before you say ‘awww, poor thing’…).

Boris and his nose through the years
Boris and his nose through the years

Boris was born in 2012, but way out on the mountain free-range rather than in our hill enclosure. We therefore only saw him once in his first summer, and at that stage nobody noticed something rather strange about his face. It was only when he and his mum Foil came into our hill enclosure in the autumn that we realised something was amiss. At first glance it looks like his eyes are wonky, but in reality both are the same distance below his antlers, and it is only below eye level that his nose takes a dive to the right with alarming squint-ness! As Boris has got older and his skull has continued to grow, the nose has become more and more wonky, but it never appears to cause him any problems, and is instead garnering him quite a fan club. Tilly once saw him having a wee sip from a puddle in a neighbouring field that no other reindeer could reach underneath the fence, so perhaps it has its advantages! Somebody who volunteered here a couple of years back once told me they had seen a similar condition in a red deer before, caused by the nasal passages developing in the womb at different rates. I have no idea if this is indeed the case, but anyone reading this has any knowledge on the subject, we’d be delighted to hear from you. We have seen it before, in a lovely male reindeer named Addjá who joined our herd from Sweden in 2004, but his face is barely squint at all in comparison to Boris; he could almost be called handsome! Although I’ve just looked through his photo archive to choose a picture of him – and on second thoughts, perhaps not.

Addja
Our lovely Swedish boy Addjá, with his slightly squint nose

When we take our harness trained reindeer on tour at Christmas time they are trained to pull a sleigh side by side, and as Addjá’s nose bends in the opposite direction to Boris’s, this has led to a bit of a debate here. Should Boris go on the left and Addjá on the right so their noses point into the centre (more stream-lined?) or should it be the other way around? As Addjá is an old boy now and Boris isn’t yet trained to harness, this may be a question we never get to figure out the answer to.

Hen

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