As the rut has now come to a close and we move into winter, us reindeer herders are feeling particularly strong. For most of the year the female reindeer in our herd spend their days free-ranging the Cairngorms. However during the autumn we have all the reindeer that we want to breed from in our 1,200 acre hill enclosure. This is to ensure that we know which bulls have bred with which females and to ensure there is no inbreeding. This does however mean we have many more reindeer to feed than usual. As this is their natural habitat, when the reindeer free-roam they find all their own food and we don’t feed them at all. Whilst there is plenty of natural grazing in the hill enclosure we also give them supplementary food to make sure that the grazing replenishes each year. At the peak of the rut we were both mixing and carrying a lot of food up to the reindeer. In fact on the days when the most reindeer have been in the enclosure we are carrying 144 kg a day or a tonne a week.
Houdini and his girls
Mixing feed can be a real work out as it involves lugging around 20kg bags of various grains, measuring out the right amounts and throwing them into a cement mixer. The reindeer food is made from a mix of barley, sugar beet, sheep mix, dark grains (a by-product of whisky distilling) and hay soaked in garlic. As you can’t buy reindeer food here in Scotland, we mix up the food from lots of different things to give the reindeer the right nutrition.
Izzy mixing feed
And then once the feed is mixed, actually getting it to the reindeer is no mean feat. Normally the food is packed into roughly 15kg sacs and carried up to the reindeer enclosure on our shoulders. We have however also been asking visitors to help carry smaller bags (no more than 6kg) of reindeer food up the hill. If you have helped us carry food, thanks again from everyone here at the Centre, both two and four legged.
You certainly won’t find a reindeer herder in the gym, especially not during the rut. Mixing and carrying feed (as well as unloading the feed lorry) is a very good work out and justifies the copious amounts of cake we all eat. I also know that all the reindeer herders, especially the women, take great joy in easily flinging a large bag of reindeer food onto our backs as a visit of people look on amazed. This summer I heard a man ask my colleague Nell if she needed a big strong man to help her carry her bag, to which she responded very politely “I’m a little strong woman and I’ll be just fine”. Go Nell!
Working with the reindeer means spending a lot of time with them. This means we often get amazing photo opportunities, with great weather conditions or reindeer posing. This also means that we can often see their slightly less glamorous side, and tend to capture it every now and then…
Manouk
LuluDiamond’s tongueLX (Lulu’s son)Izzy discovered what a bog is during her first week of volunteering!The boys always seem keen to get in the Christmas spirit early by decorating their antlers.
A reindeer in the house!Sooty letting a youngster have a nap at the end of a hill tripKate’s picture of Fly
During the autumn months reindeer are starting to prepare for winter. By October, their summer coat has begun to disappear below a fresh new winter coat. Reindeer winter coat is one of the warmest coats in the animal kingdom, with over 2000 hairs per square inch on their body. About 600 hairs per square inch are hollow allowing air to be trapped between them forming an insulating layer, which can keep help them survive down to 72°C.
Cairn Gorm views
The rutting season is an important time of year for Reindeer bulls. First their velvet strips off their antlers leaving them with solid bone, stained red from the blood supply that was there to help the antlers to grow. Eventually the antlers lose the red stain and their impressive sets are revealed!
Kota during this year’s rutting season
Castrated males don’t lose the velvet from their antlers quite so quickly. This is because the reduction of testosterone doesn’t trigger the response to shed it. This also means that the castrated males get to keep their antlers slightly longer than the bulls. Because of this, castrated males make for the best Christmas reindeer.
Females that are put with the bulls during the rutting season spend the majority of the time with the breeding bull. Calves and yearlings will stay with their mothers during this period too.
Female with her calf and a friend
Red squirrels
The red squirrels are also preparing for winter during the autumn too. They collect stores of nuts and burry them so once winter begins they have a source of food, even when no suitable food is available. The only issue they have is remembering where they buried their store.
Also during the autumn Red Squirrels begin to grow their winter coat. Their winter coat, like reindeer, is thicker than their summer coat, and denser. This allows them to keep warm during the winter. Their ear tufts also become thicker and more prominent.
Pine Martins
A group of pine martins is called “richness”, even though they are skillful climbers they normally hunt on the ground. Pine martens are believed to have come to Britain around 10,500 BC, at the end of the last ice age. They live in woodland habitats and were Britain’s second most common carnivore around 6,500 years ago in Britain and Ireland.
Similar to red squirrels, pine martins do not hibernate. They have thick fur all over there body to keep them warm during the cold winters. Pine Martins are hardy mammals and will eat anything including mushrooms, insects, small mammals such as voles and bird eggs. Being omnivorous allows them to always have a source of food even when certain plants and berries have died off due to the winter frost. They mainly forage or hunt for food at night or late in the evening.
The local bar to the Reindeer Centre is named after this elusive creature, the reason being that several Pine Martins have been spotted outside the bar late in the evening eating the various feed which is left out for the Red Squirrels. (Reindeer herders are also often found at the Pine Marten Bar late in the evening…)
Birds
Osprey
During the autumn Ospreys will start their incredible journey back to Africa, where they travel up to 5000 miles. The female is the first to leave. She leaves the nest and her fledglings in the care of the male who will continue to fish for them until they are able to fend for themselves, once they can the male will set of on the migration. Then finally the young will start their journey.
The mating pair may not see each other over the winter period, but will meet up again the following breeding season back in Scotland or Northern England. Ospreys were driven to extinction in the UK in the 1900’s due to egg collectors, they were also considered a pest due to them eating the salmon and trout.
Ospreys returned for the first time to breed in 1954 to Loch Garten near Aviemore. This was a natural recolonization, but the birds still needed a huge amount of help and protection to breed successfully in the Scottish highlands.
Eventually several pairs of osprey began to breed successfully in more remote parts of Scotland. However, many birds were helped with artificial nest platforms and nest protection watches, and a huge public enthusiasm for the birds helped ensure their survival.
Golden eagle
The golden eagle is the top predator in Scotland. It’s a massive bird of prey that mainly hunts rabbits and mountain hares but will also catch foxes, young deer and large birds like grouse. It can be seen soaring high in the sky in upland areas and remote glens. Golden eagles have large home territories, nesting on rocky cliff faces and in trees where it builds a giant nest or ‘eyrie’. These nests are often used by successive generations to rear their own young. Furthermore, similar to Osprey, Golden eagles pair for life
There are around 400 breeding pairs of Golden Eagles within Scotland and Northern England too. The birds are perfectly adapted to survive the harsh Scottish environment. Their talons can grow up to three inches, along with an amazingly sharp beak makes them perfect hunters. Also their varied diet means that there will always be some sort of prey to hunt.
Ptarmigans
They are exclusively found in the Scottish Highlands. Mature birds eat a diet of seeds, berries, nuts and leaves, while juveniles will also eat invertebrates. During the breeding season, males usually mate with one hen, producing one brood a year of around seven eggs.
You can often find them all year round on top of the highest mountains in the UK, especially on the Cairngorm Plato. Ptarmigans prefer the rocky tops of mountains to the forest environment.
During the autumn months they start to grow in their winter feathers. Eventually they change from brown to a pristine white colour. This helps protect them from predation. Blending into the snowy winter background makes it more difficult for Golden Eagles to hunt the small bird.
I am currently a student at Salford University in greater Manchester, where I study wildlife conservation and practical conservation. At the university I was part of the climbing club and use to go climbing regularly to the cCairngorm National Park during the summer and winter months. During our time up there I had always wanted to visit the Cairngorm Reindeer Herd, but just never really had the opportunity to go visit the centre and the herd.
Until around two summers ago, me and my mum had been travelling the north east coast of Scotland and were making our way up to Inverness. Once we had reached Aviemore I finally got the chance to visit the reindeer up in the hill enclosure. The first reindeer herders that I met were Dave and Lottie and the first reindeer that I fully remember meeting were Glenshee and Viking.
Who doesn’t love handfeeding?Glenshee looking as magnificent as ever.
After visiting I wanted to spend more time with the reindeer and the people who managed the herd, so I applied to be a volunteer. Whilst I was a volunteer I had amazing hands on experience with the reindeer and learnt more about how they can live and thrive in the Cairngorm Mountains. I was lucky enough to spend time with the reindeer twins, as well as with some of the male reindeer during the time the velvet was beginning to strip from their antlers.
Giving Starsky a bottle
Leading the girls
After my week volunteering I went on my university placement year, and managed to finish my 9 months of placement earlier than expected, and therefore I could accept a job at the reindeer centre. I am currently working as a reindeer herder for the summer. I have been living and working at the centre now for a couple of months now and I absolutely love it.
