Heather Hanshaw – Past Reindeer herder and Leathersmith

Hello everyone! First of all, let me introduce myself for those who have not have met me.

I’m Heather, and I used to be a Reindeer Herder. I like to think I still am really. As we always say, it’s like being a King or Queen of Narnia, once a Reindeer Herder, always a Reindeer Herder!

In my former guise as a herder! Christmas training with Eco, Dylan, Sporran and Sting (and Ceris at the back!). Photo by Tony Marsh

So, my Reindeer herding career began way back in 1998, when the ‘Sweeties’ year of reindeer were born. I first went to the Centre for work experience from the local High school, and when I arrived for my week’s experience in September, the calves had just been named. Some of you will remember Eclair, Polo and Malteser, to name a few!

Back in 2002 when I was 18, with Cluster (biggest antlers), Shock, Rascal, Tuna, Torrent and Pepsy.

As the years rolled by, I worked at the Reindeer Centre off and on for roughly 15 years, in my school and university holidays. And once I graduated from Edinburgh University, with a degree in Geography (using the reindeer as my subject for my 4th year dissertation!), I headed back full time.

The good ol’ days of reindeer herding… Top left clockwise: Me with Shekel, Beastie, Caddis and Diddly.

After the Reindeer Centre, I worked in a couple of other jobs, before deciding it was time to head into the family business of leather working. My Mum and Dad have been leather workers since before I came along, and while I always helped them in the workshop as a child, it wasn’t until about 5 years ago that I really started learning the craft. I now have my own workshop in Carrbridge, not so far from the Reindeer Centre and would now call myself a full time Leathersmith. I run my own business, Loch Ness Leather, and make belts, handbags and hats, along with smaller accessories.

In my workshop in my garden

But how is that relevant to the Reindeer Centre now? Well, those who support the herd by adopting a reindeer, will know that each year when you re-adopt your reindeer, you get a lovely pack in the post including amongst other things, a hand written letter, and a selection of gifts. Well, this year, I am in charge of one of those gifts! I have been commissioned to make leather keyrings which will be going into the adoption packs. Each one is made by hand, by myself, in my workshop in Carrbridge. Luckily my workshop is in my garden, so I have been able to carry on working safely during the current situation. And it’s just been a case of handing over a new batch each time the herders pop by with a Wild Farm meat delivery for us!

The pattern is embossed and the dye applied

Each keyring is made of natural vegetable tanned leather. I cut the leather to shape, emboss it with the reindeer design, and then dye it by hand. Layering up the colours to make each one – they’re all very individual! A rivet is then used to attach the ring, and it’s ready to go. And all made within 12 miles of the Cairngorm Reindeer Centre.

Colour complete, and the finished product!

This year is a tough time for us all, I personally usually sell my wares at Highland Games and other events across Scotland through the summer. However, they have all been cancelled this year, understandably, so I have been focusing on selling online. If you would like to see more of my work, please do visit my website, www.lochnessleather.co.uk. Or of course, you can follow me on Facebook or Instagram. As a thank you for supporting myself, and the Reindeer of course!, I would like to offer you a 10% discount across the whole of my website. To be sent the code for this, please click here to sign up for my newsletter.

You can also keep a look out for more Cairngorm Reindeer Herd and Loch Ness Leather collaborations in the Reindeer Centre online shop, coming soon and throughout the year!

I hope you all enjoy your adoption packs this year!
Thank you all and Stay Safe!
Heather Hanshaw (Past Reindeer Herder)

N.B. Because of the way our adoption scheme gifts work, only those re-adopting a reindeer from now until April next year will receive one of Heather’s keyrings with their pack. Adoptions purchased for the first time in this period will receive different gifts. However, if you don’t want to miss out on a keyring, please feel free to get in touch with Heather directly via her website to purchase one!

 

Polled reindeer

When people think of reindeer, they inevitably picture them with a big set of antlers atop their furry heads. Unlike other deer species, this even applies to females, who are the only deer species to routinely grow a lovely pair of bony protrusions each year, in order to help them hold a high enough status within the herd to gain enough access to feed in harsh climates.

Wapiti, showing off her stunning antlers. No one picks a fight with her…

Only… some reindeer don’t grow antlers. The official term for this is “polled”. We’ve had a number of individuals over the history of our herd (and this is the case worldwide too) who, year after year, maintain the smooth top to their head, whilst reindeer all around them are tapping away to encourage the velvety growths which finally turn into hard bone at the end of each summer.

This is almost always seen just in females (cows), and when scientists have studied reindeer and caribou herds across the herd it seems that between 0.5 and 5% of cows can be expected to not grow antlers. Why would this be? Antlers are used as weapons when fighting for dominance within the herd – indeed a cow with large antlers is rarely challenged. So surely not having antlers is a disadvantage? On the surface, yes, but by not growing antlers a huge amount of energy is conserved every single year. In some habitats, like the thick forests that forest reindeer and woodland caribou live in, antlers can be a hindrance, and the smaller herd sizes perhaps mean there is less of a need to compete. Antlers are more important for a male in terms of breeding success, as a bull with just one or no antlers at all is unlikely to have the chance to breed.

Antlers are hugely important for breeding success for bulls – if you don’t have antlers you won’t win cows.

There seem to be two factors behind refusal to grow antlers. First, there is nutrition. A reindeer who is struggling to find enough food will prioritise body condition over antler size – an adult who is having an unexpected hard year will grow smaller antlers than usual. If this happens to a calf – for example one who is orphaned at a young age, they may not have any antler growth at all in their first year, or perhaps for longer. Our wee reindeer Diddly had a difficult start as her mum Flake didn’t have any milk, and whilst we bottle fed her, we couldn’t match the nutrition reindeer milk would have provided. Perhaps this was the reason she didn’t grow antlers?

Diddly by name, Diddly by nature, and never an antler on her head…

The other factor is genetics – as we trace all of the family history of the members of our herd, we can often trace lack of antlers back to an ancestor. It seems to be that the polled characteristic is a recessive one, often carried but only expressed if a calf inherits two copies of the gene. I was interested to find this note when looking back through old diaries from the early days of our herd:

So for Mr Utsi, who founded our herd, polled (antlerless) reindeer were a desirable animal, and I also feel that antlerless females tend to be strong characters – perhaps because they’ve had to hold their own in an antlered world?? As our reindeer have a pretty easy life and we supplement their grazing in winter with feed, any antlerless cows tend to be that way because of their genetics rather than a lack of nutrition, and perhaps with plenty of food available there is no huge detriment to their diet if they happen to be a little further down the pecking order.

Wonderful Arnish – lack of antlers never got in her way.

Arnish, one of the leaders of the herd when I started work as a herder, never grew an antler in her life, but was well respected among the other reindeer – if challenged she would simply use her front feet in place of antlers! She was also a successful mother, rearing Addax, Jaffa and Svalbard. Jaffa’s daughter Brimick only grew one antler. We also have one-antlered reindeer Dixie in the herd, who inherited this trait from grandmother Cherry.

Dixie, proud of her singular antler.

Ferrari didn’t grow antlers at all until she was nine, then surprised everyone by growing one antler annually (on the same side!) until the end of her days. Interestingly, she’s a direct descendant of polled cow Mitou (mentioned above). From her descendants, her grand-daughter Malawi is in the herd today and has been antlerless so far – she’s currently fifteen so I think she’ll probably not start now! Ferrari’s great-grandson Merrick was also the only male we’ve had yet who grew just one antler, after growing nothing as a calf.

Malawi – not an antler to be seen!
Merrick as a calf with no antlers. Definitely genetic rather than due to a lack of nutrition – he was one hefty calf!
Merrick as a handsome three year old, with one antler.

And what about wee Bond, some of you who follow our stories closely may ask. As an orphaned calf, he grew no antlers at all (caused presumably by struggling to get enough nutrition), then last year as a yearling he tapped furiously away at his pedicles (where the antlers grow from) and managed about 1 inch of antler on one side (you had to peer pretty closely to see it!). You’ll have to wait to find out what happens this year…

Yearling Bond, not the most impressive of headgear…

Andi

Memorable Reindeer of the Past: Flake

I thought maybe I’d start an occasional blog series remembering particular characters in the herd who are no longer with us, because some readers amongst you may have met them once upon a time, and those of you that didn’t can at least have a brief glimpse of some of the most memorable reindeer from our herd.

Flake
Flake with her beautiful antlers

I scrolled through our photo archive of reindeer no longer with us, and my eye alighted on Flake. Well, there is a fine place to start! Plenty of memorable things about Flake, and what a fabulous reindeer she was over the years. I first met her in summer 2009, having been away for several months, and arrived back and headed up to the hill enclosure for the first time. Most of the reindeer there I recognised, or managed to work out pretty quickly, but who was this bull with a blue ear tag? Quite narrow, upright antlers compared to some, but still a very good size, and ‘clean’ in design rather than the chaotic, many tined antlers of the castrate males. I was flummoxed. Turns out it was Flake, in the enclosure for the summer months rather than out free-ranging like the other females, due to her calf Diddly (who we’ll get to in a tick).

Flake
Flake was a beautiful reindeer

Flake’s fabulous antlers set her apart from many of the other cows, as they were much more elaborate than the average female set and a very decent size most years. In 2009 however, the year I first saw her, they were a particularly fine set and there is a specific reason for that…

Flake was a notoriously bad breeding female. Her calving record, filed away on our computer here, is basically a list of disaster after disaster, from stillborn calves, to ones that got stuck and needed pulling out by the vet, to premature twins, you name it. In 2011 she produced a calf who had a problem with his joints, probably not helped by the fact that Flake had calved right next to a large boulder which he had promptly got stuck beneath! The entry on her records for her final calf Brave, born in 2012, reads ‘Normal!!!!’.

But before that, in 2009, there was Diddly. Born prematurely, she was tiny, so much so that she couldn’t reach Flake’s udder. Even if she had been able to, Flake didn’t produce any milk that year anyway, so right from the start we had to hand-rear her, bottle feeding through the night to start with.

Heather feeding Diddly
Heather working hard to look after Diddly, while Flake stands by
Diddly
Diddly was so tiny!

Flake and Diddly started off in the paddocks, then eventually moved up to the hill enclosure for the remainder of the summer and the autumn. And that is the reason for Flake’s great antlers – while we slaved away feeding Diddly for the first 5 months of her life, Flake basically sat back and let us do all the work – a ‘designer mum’. All the energy going into her body from the feed we lug up the hill every day went straight to her antler growth rather than to milk production. The antlers of the other females, out on the high tops foraging for themselves, all showed the detrimental effects of the effort of raising a calf, being smaller and wigglier, but not Flake. She resided in state in the hill enclosure all summer, fat as butter and with fancy headgear, with a queue of reindeer herders tending to her every need and raising her calf for her!

Flake and Diddly
Flake and Diddly when I first met them in August 2009

 

Flake and Diddly
Flake with the grown up Diddly in February 2011

Flake passed away in 2013, an old girl by that point. Very sadly, Diddly followed later that year, but not before producing her son Crowdie, who is now nearly 3 years old and a great fun wee reindeer. Diddly was an interesting character in her own right as she never produced any antlers at all, remaining bald for her whole life, a little quirk that sometimes happens with female reindeer.

Hen

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