Scolty – Page 2 – The Cairngorm Reindeer Herd

18th December 202021st November 2020

Reindeer Obsession!

This week’s blog is written by Candice, one of our long standing adopters, who has become something of a obsessed follower over the years! We regularly tell her she’s mad…

Candice helping out at at Christmas event, with Duke

My interest (or rather obsession!) with reindeer started in the early 90’s when holidaying with my parents, I was 11 and animal mad (I’m now 40 and still as besotted). So, one visit to see these wonderful creatures and I was hooked! I started adopting reindeer in 1995 and have now just signed up to my 26^th year of supporting the scheme. Being from Kent, my visits only occurred 3 -4 times a year but no holiday was complete without a Hill Trip!

As the years went on and life progressed with exams, new jobs and house moves reindeer were never far from my thoughts, and relocation in 2004 resulted in me being only 80 miles from the herd instead of 580…RESULT! I was able to visit much more frequently and became a familiar face at Reindeer House, even though I know they all think I’m completely bonkers (Editor’s note: you’ll not find us arguing 😉 ) ! In 2008 I married Cameron and managed somehow to keep the reindeer obsession to a minimum until he’d signed on the dotted line, but of course we HAD to visit the reindeer on our honeymoon and then the extent of my addiction came to light!

In 2009 our daughter Pandra was born and our visits continued so inevitably she fell head over heels in love with the furry critters. At the age of 3 she took part in a series for CBeebies “Time for School” and for the Christmas episode the reindeer visited her school, Pandra proudly walked a little white calf on a lead rope into the playground in front of the cameras and the whole school. What we hadn’t realised that this was the making of a beautiful “friendship” between her and Blue, this pure white cutie. Three years later we were approached again by CBeebies to film more footage but this time in their natural environment of the Cairngorms for a programme called “The Let’s go Club”. Again it was the Christmas special and we spent a whole day filming out in the hills. By this time Pandra had a little brother, Oakley, who of course has HAD to love reindeer, luckily he does.

Pandra watching Fiona bottle feed Soleil…

…and graduating to having a go herself a couple of years later with Fergus!

Oakley made his first visit to the herd at 2.5 weeks old and at 9 months refused to be carried on the Hill Trip and crawled all the way! Making frequent visits, we visit every month, and being an active contributor to the social media platform you start recognising like-minded people and friendships form, sometimes you even stumble on each other on a Hill Trip, and you hear that terrifying phrase…”Oh so you’re Candice”….cringe!!! Mind you with reindeer vinyls plastered up the side of my car, I’m not easily missed! So, I decided to create a group where we reindeer enthusiasts (that’s the posh name!) can share pictures, stories and everything reindeer. We call ourselves the Reindeer Groupies and are all as mad as a box of frogs!

The group is 20+ strong and we meet up in smaller groups throughout the year either on the Hill Trip or with Tilly at her farm near Tomintoul (the second site for the reindeer herd) but we always try and have a large ‘Groupie Meet’ in October. This wonderful group of people from all over the UK, Holland and Denmark has all come about because of reindeer, of course Reindeer House think we’re all crazy but saying that on one of our October “get-togethers” Dave (reindeer herder) arrived for our private Hill Trip dressed as a reindeer so I’m not sure they have a leg to stand on!

First reindeer located at the car park….

At Christmas the reindeer usually visit town centres around the UK spreading Christmas cheer, of course the Groupies are always there (not all together!) lending a hand, chatting to the public and educating people about these superb creatures. Every November/December in ‘normal years’ I travel over 2,000 miles to various reindeer events which I have done for many years, I’m very lucky to be able to and even luckier to be trusted to do so. It is a great privilege to have had reindeer in my life for this long and I’m even luckier to have found a group of like-minded (even if slightly crazy) group of people that I can call lifelong friends! Long live the Groupies!

A quick ride on the sleigh while the herders were training the novice reindeer in October 2018

Candice

27th December 20195th August 2024

It’s the time of the year when…

…our reindeer turn into cows… Not quite, but it is the time of the year when they are casting their antlers, and beginning to look perhaps a little like people imagine a reindeer to.

Oh dear Spider! Spider always casts his antlers early – usually by the end of November.

Jonas cast his upright parts of the antlers about six weeks ago but is holding on to his blade and front points.

Casting antlers is a completely natural process, and is one of the huge differences between antlers and horns (no deer in the world have horns!). Reindeer grow their antlers from scratch every year, from an area on the top of their skull called the pedicle. The growth period is from about March to the end of Summer, at which point it calcifies into solid bone, with no feeling remaining. After use in the autumn rut, the males cast their antlers, meaning they don’t have to carry a heavy weight through the winter snows, and leaving the coast clear to start their new set in Spring.

Jonne is one of the few castrated reindeer still with a full set of antlers on his head in late December.

This means that from November antlers drop off on a regular basis, sometimes at the most inopportune moments (in the middle of a Hill Trip for example, causing panic among visitors and frantic reassurances of “It’s normal, it’s ok!” from the herder!). As we get nearer to Christmas, our choice of which reindeer join a Christmas event team becomes more and more influenced by who still has antlers on their head – event organisers can be a little grumpy if a team turns up with just one antler between six reindeer!

LX has been lopsided for about a fortnight now, whereas Scolty cast the upright of his left antler just a few days ago.

Bingo cast his whole right antler a few days ago.

Most of our males are castrated at 3 years old, helping to prevent inbreeding and giving them a much calmer life in general. A side effect of castration is that the antlers are not as dense as the bulls’, and tend to be cast in sections rather than in one piece. Hence we end up with reindeer with “One and a half” antlers, or often just the front points remaining after the more top-heavy upright points are cast. It’s interesting that members of the public often don’t realise that a reindeer with their front points has actually got any antler missing, whereas a reindeer who has cast all of one antler but none of the other looks more lopsided and draws many more questions of “Did they lose it fighting?”

With his front point remaining, Duke gets less concerned comments than reindeer who still have one entire antler on their head. In the background, Stuc still has his full (small) antlers.

Sometimes antlers are lost in squabbles, but only when they’re ready to fall off anyway, and I think as many go from being bumped against a tree (or a herder’s backside!). And whilst there is sometimes a little residual blood on the pedicle when the antler is cast, it isn’t a painful process, the only insult being to their pride, as they often drop down the pecking order. But this is often when a bully gets their comeuppance, as the other reindeer they’ve pushed around see the tables turned and get their own back. So don’t feel too sorry for them!

Andi

31st May 20193rd August 2024

‘Background’ Reindeer

Within a herd of 150 reindeer there are favourites, bold ones, greedy ones and unusual ones that we all talk about and you will hear about, however, 150 is a lot of reindeer and I am sure there are a few out there that you haven’t heard of so much so here is a blog to introduce them. These reindeer are no less friendly but with others being such bold characters they tend to take a back step, out of the lime light.

Santana was born in 2016, the year we named them after artists and bands and she is a lovely little female. She comes from a very well-known family. Her mother was Haze and sisters Gazelle, Caddis and Camembert. Her brother Fyrish who was one of our main breeding bulls last year. She definitely isn’t as bold as her siblings though. For many years she kept herself to herself, however over the more recent years I have definitely grown a soft spot for Santana and she has clocked onto the extra feeding for the older reindeer in the herd. A specific story I remember was during the calving season a few years back and Santana calved that morning. I went down to bring her into our area where other cows had their calves and as I approached her I was expecting to push her towards the open gates as I hadn’t worked with her much in the past and I just expected her to be a bit more timid, especially having just calved. So as I got closer and closer to her, she seemed pretty settled, even a bit interested in what I was doing or maybe just the bag of food I had with me. Then before I knew it I had my arm around her neck popping a halter on. She didn’t bat an eye lid and followed in in with her new bundle of joy hot on her heels!

I started with a female reindeer so here is one of our male Christmas reindeer now, Bingo. Bingo is fairly aloof and I wouldn’t call him timid because he has taken part in some of our busiest events and been an absolute star, but he’s not one for a fuss and when it comes to catching him he can be quite canny. He tends to slink around in the background, not join in with hand feeding and definitely keeps us fit when he decides otherwise when bringing the herd into the shed. His mother Jade, I would say was one of the more timid females, however other members of his family have been some of the tamest and greediest reindeer in the herd over the years but keeping us on our toes obviously floats his boat!

Roule, a 6 year old breeding female over the years has given us the run around… all I can say is thank goodness she is a female and we don’t have to work with her too much. Considering her mother, Rusa was probably one of the greediest females in our herd, back in the day, Roule was the polar opposite and it wasn’t due to her not getting enough handling as a calf… that she got, but It’s just her nature I guess. Brother Atlantic used to be quite head strong but in his older years has mellowed and other brother Hamish is just a massive softy so it just proves that genetics have a huge amount to play when it comes to each individual reindeer and their character. Luckily her latest calf Frost hasn’t followed in his mothers footprints and he is actually a lovely wee chap. Bodes well for his future as one of our Christmas reindeer.

As a calf, Scolty was quite hard work and never really got any tamer. As a result of being a bit more timid we made sure he got lots of handling as a calf and yearling to make the process of becoming a Christmas reindeer better from the age of three onwards. And then he proved us all wrong! Last October we trained him to harness and he went out on Christmas tour visiting various towns across the country spreading the Christmas joy. He was an absolute star! He took everything in his stride and by the end of the tour he was as well trained, if not better, than some of the reindeer who had been doing it for years. I had him out myself and he was an absolute pleasure to work with, and on some occasions was so chilled out in the pen he fell fast asleep.

That’s a few more reindeer you may, or may not, have known so well but hopefully I have done them justice in a wee write up. There are lots of reindeer in the herd who all deserve a mention but their time will come.

Fiona

8th March 20193rd August 2024

Christmas and New year!

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.

Christmas team 2018… or at least most of it, including dogs.

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! ?

Cake given to us at our event in Essex by one of our lovely adopters… Thanks Michelle!

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 ?

Fiona, Tom and Bobby heading off on their first events

Ruth joining the team to make sure we were doing all the right things

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