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Four years. That’s how long it’s been since I had my first stint as a ‘Reindeer Herder’. It is a job title that has raised many curious eyebrows in subsequent job interviews. “No it’s not a typo, it really did happen” is a sentence I have found myself saying all too often.

 

Those four years have been spent living in big cities, first Sydney and now North London, where in September I will resume my final year of study as a Physiotherapist. Hen pointed out that I only seem to come up to work at the Reindeer centre when there is a football World Cup taking place. And amongst the changes here since 2014, is the amount of herders who would watch the matches with me (and not all of them would be supporting “the team playing against England”). The majestic and dramatic mountain range appears to have remained the same, as has the gentle and charming nature of the Reindeer. ‘Strange’ is the word I would use to describe seeing the yellow tags (cheeses) as grown-ups, having known them only as calves in 2014. But no words can describe the depth of positive feelings which I get from being up in this part of the world, surrounded by friendly and fun human-beings, as well as the delightfully mischievous Reindeer. Even when I can’t scrub the smell of Reindeer food off of my hands, or I am bitten by my hundredth midgie of the day, I have a lot of gratitude to be up in such a beautiful part of the world.

 

One feeling that I had forgotten is the feeling of blissful exhaustion. After a day of herding, there are so many fun things to do in the evening such as sport, wild swimming and fell-running that it’s hard for the body to keep up. But with FOMO (fear of missing out) imbedded into my brain, the body is finding a way to adapt from sedentary study days to keeping up with shenanigans and I recently attended my first ever Ceilidh (a night of traditional Scottish dancing) where I had a whale of a time.

I hope to see you on a tour sometime and share the pleasure that one gets from being around these delightfully mischievous Reindeer. My tours can hopefully only get better nowadays, after a small incident last week, whereby on my first hill trip in four years I thought I’d try out my basic level French on a young boy. What transpired really shook my confidence in the French language; I asked the young boy a question and to my shock he swiftly sprinted over to his mum and grabbed her leg with both hands. What I had meant to ask “do you like feeding the Reindeer?” actually came out as “do you like eating the Reindeer?”. And fair play to the young lad, he wasn’t interested in eating any Reindeer. I might stick to English in the future.

 

Since I have not come across many Reindeer Physiotherapists, I may be set for a career with humans. But, as they say…”once a Reindeer herder, always a Reindeer herder”. And I am thankful to all of you lads and lassies reading this for your dedicated support which allows such a wonderfully run business to thrive.

“What’s this one called?” “That’s Aonach again..”

 

A scenario similar to this one has occurred many times since I came back to work at the Cairngorm Reindeer Herd this summer. In the past blogs have been written about how herders learn the reindeer names, and I desperately read a couple of those in the hopes of finding ways of dealing with all of the reindeer names. People who have worked here for some time seem to be able to recognise a particular reindeer from a fairly long distance or a photograph, whereas I’ve been stuck in the phase of trying to sneak up on a reindeer to be able to read his ear tag number,  after which I can use my cheat sheet to check his name.

To change this the other way around I decided to have a little ID’ing session. Like usual, I sneaked up on a couple of regurgitating reindeer to have a quick look at their ear tag number. I always try to look at the reindeer’s distinct features first, but, to be fair, many look quite similar in the beginning and except from a few very distinct ones it can be really hard to spot something outstanding which tells the reindeer apart from the others. I think I followed reindeer Lomond all the way across the enclosure, trying to read his bloody ear tag number. It’s easier to read when they are eating their food, so while my colleague Hen distributed the food in nice small piles I started to ID them along the line. But, reindeer being animals, they moved about a lot. So it happened a couple of times that I was staring hard at a certain reindeer, hoping for an “aha” moment, not getting one, sneaking around him to check the ear tag number, only to find out I’ve just had him 3 spots back in the line! After going up and down the line a couple of times, with some reindeer encountered at least 10 times and others not once, I decided it was time to call it a day in terms of ID’ing. Unfortunately, as soon as I got back to the centre and looked at a photo I’d made that morning, I realised I couldn’t even identify the reindeer in the photo!! This meant it was time for drastic measures.

ID’ing reindeer is quite important as the first way we know something could be wrong with a reindeer is when he doesn’t show up for breakfast, lunch, or dinner. Reindeer like their food and just like you and me, if they’re not enthusiastic about eating, something’s the matter. It is then the herder’s duty to quickly go over all the reindeer present to check who’s missing. And since reindeer are not like school children in that they won’t dutifully participate in a role call, the best way to quickly do this is to identify each and every one of them by sight as soon as possible. So there you go, the quicker you learn the names, the better.

As a last resort I decided to consult my own knowledge about learning in general. I’ve just finished my English teacher education at uni, so I’ve learned a lot about how people learn and memorise things. One of the ways people memorise vocabulary best is by creating mnemonic devices. One way to do so is to link the word you’re learning (so what it is) to something that sounds very similar to the word. For example, the French word for to eat is manger (pronounced mahn-zhay). A manger in English is a bowl or trough to put animal food in, link this word to the French word (same in spelling, different pronunciation) and you have your mnemonic device. Here are a few of the things I came up with, some of them made my colleagues chuckle..

 

 

Lomond (901) – Loch Lomond is the 1st landmark you come across when you walk the West Highland Way.

Fyrish (903) – The (F)Irish flag has 3 colours.

 

 

Spartan (004) – Spartans were born for (4) fighting.

 

Olmec (008) – Olmec ate (=8) chocolate (The Olmecs were a Latin American tribe that were the first to consume chocolate!).

Jute (013) – the Jutes brought bad luck (13 = unlucky) to England (the Jutes were a Germanic tribe that invaded England).

Roman (018) – For a lot of Roman stories you have to be 18 or older to be allowed to read them … (The Latin stories about old Rome contain a lot of sexual harassment…).

 

Burns (103) – When you have a 3rd degree burn wound you have to go to the hospital.

 

Now I know most of the reindeer in the hill enclosure!

Manouk

Fyrish and I during a morning IDing session

 

Just like humans, reindeer come in all shapes, sizes and colours so here are some of the reindeer in our herd who stand out from the crowd. Whether they grow no antlers, are pure white (which is very rare) or maybe part of their body isn’t quite ‘the norm’, they still fit into the herd just like all the others absolutely fine. If anything it makes them very easy to identify to us herders.

I have split this blog into two parts telling you about the females first and in part two I’ll tell you about the male reindeer. Turns out we have a few quirky reindeer in the herd it’s worth the split. I won’t go into quirky reindeer herders or I’d be here all day 😉

 

Malawi:

At the age of 13, Malawi has been around for a long time. She is fairly aloof in her character and not one to be in your face at hand feeding time. She likes to keep herself to herself. Malawi has never grown any antlers. This isn’t uncommon with female reindeer and in the past we have had a few reindeer not grow any antlers – Arnish and Diddly to name a couple. We have also had cases where certainly females haven’t grown any antlers, then one year they decide to grow one antler. This was the case with Cheery and Ferrari. I think Ferrari was 9 years old when she grew her first antler. This doesn’t seem to affect their position in the herd when it comes to dominance and certainly with Arnish I would say she was one of our more dominant females in her days. I guess when you don’t have antlers to push the other reindeer around you have to think of other ways and Arnish was more like a bulldozer at times, head down and move them on with brute force and confidence. It seemed to work for her!  Malawi is now the only reindeer in our herd with no antlers but I’m sure once she has gone there will be more to come so we will wait and see!

Blondie:

She is an old girl now at the age of 12 years and she was actually one of the first ‘pure white’ reindeer to be born into our herd. This is an rare condition within reindeer and it is called Leucism. I believe cats can also be leucitic. With this condition it does mean that Blondie is completely deaf. We have tested this theory many times when we arrive to the herd, very chilled out and relaxed and Blondie is in fact fast asleep. Where the other reindeer wake up when they hear us coming Blondie is still flat out asleep and eyes closed. Until we wake her up gently, so she doesn’t get a fright.  Of course in the wild this would be a massive disadvantage as they wouldn’t hear predators coming or even when they are a calf they would hear their mother calling but having got to the age of 12 Blondie has obviously coped well with her deafness and it doesn’t seem to slow her down. Other pure white and deaf reindeer have included Lego and Blue who are no longer with us.

Meadow:

Meadow has no ears… She wasn’t born like this, this happened when she was a calf on the free range with her mother Maisie. Sometimes when reindeer fall very ill and maybe we aren’t around to give assistance because the herd are free ranging, this can go one of two ways. Their bodies may not be able to cope with the illness in which case they pass away but on the other hand they may be fighters and battle through, even though their body suffers for it. In Meadows case she battled through something (we aren’t sure what) and as a result her body stopped the blood circulation to other parts of her body which didn’t necessarily need it. The tops of her ears were the first place to be affected and the skin dies and falls off. Hooves can also be another part of the body they cast due to lack of blood and the body ‘fixing’ itself. As an adult, Meadow has gone on to live a healthy happy life ad this hasn’t affected her at all, infact I would say she is one of our biggest females in the herd. Another reindeer who has completely lost the tops of his ears is Celt, a two year old young male. Sometimes the don’t lose the whole of the tops of their ears, just the very tip and this is the case with Pony, Wapiti, Jaffa and Gloriana.

 

Fiona

Hi my name is Alison (Ali) and I’ve been asked to write a blog.  To be honest I’m not really sure what a blog even is so I’ll do my best (or worst) first blog.  So I might as well start from the very beginning.

 

I am a new reindeer herder at the centre and I have never worked with animals before in my life.  I gained my job apparently as I was good with people (the hard bit) and the reindeer bit I can easily learn.  Reindeer are fascinating animals and I have certainly learnt a lot about them since my first close up encounter with them.

My interview involved trudging up a snowy mountain, thigh deep snow in places, looking for a herd of reindeer in the mist.  What a magical moment finding the herd at the top of that hill.

 

While herding them down we reached a large patch of snow, I was amazed to have 45+ reindeer charging past either side of me, it was as if it they were dancing in delight with legs moving in crazy directions.  This happened each time we reached a large patch of snow.    On one occasion one of the yearlings was so excited he started running in circles as the rest of the herd had confused expressions trying to decide if they should follow him or not.  I remember thinking even if I don’t get the job this experience alone will be a fantastic memory that will stick with me forever.  Luckily I got the job and have had many more tales to tell.

 

Ali (Reindeer Herder)

 

Whilst wondering what to write about, I happened to flick back through some of our old photos, and Lilibet’s familiar face made me smile, so I thought I’d talk a little about her, as she was such a character in the herd.

Lilibet was born in 2002, to mum Glacier, one of the lightest coloured reindeer in the herd. As a young calf, she was brown in colour with a white forehead, which suggested she would turn white as she grew into her adult coat. White reindeer are relatively unusual in our herd, but Lilibet was a proper chip off the old block, and almost the spitting image of her mum. Glacier was a very friendly reindeer and taught her calves to be the same – usually when youngsters see mum marching determinedly towards humans and their bags of feed, they follow suit! Glacier had many calves over the course of her life, several of which were white, and one of which, Blondie, is pure white (leucistic) with blue eyes. 2002 was our 50^th anniversary, and it was also the Queen’s golden jubilee, so Lilibet was named with the Queen’s nickname.

Lilibet went on to have several calves of her own, and has also passed on the “white” genetics to her own calves. Oryx was born in 2008, in the theme of “antlered and horned animals” and was light coloured with a pure white face. He was the first of a trend for Lilibet’s calves – we try to make links with mothers where possible to help us remember who’s related to who – so all of Lilibet’s calves ended up beginning with the letter “O”. Light coloured Oreo and Origami followed in 2009 and 2011 respectively, but then there was a surprise in 2012 when her calf, Olympic, was one of the darkest of the year! He was the dark sheep of the family so to speak, but is a very lovely fellow!

Lilibet was always a character within the free-ranging herd, a real friendly face who was delighted to see us (well, the food bag anyway) and very dependable in following along to where you wanted the herd. She had a knack of worming her nose into the feed sack and proving incredibly difficult to extract!

 

As is the case with many of our lovely old females, Lili passed away out on the high tops over summer at the ripe old age of 14. It feels like the right way for them to go, in their natural habitat on the hills that they know so well. She’d been a wonderful member of the herd and her legacy lives on with her sons Oryx, Origami and Olympic still entertaining us with their great natures.

 

Andi

So as most of you already know, during the winter time we locate the herd every morning and a couple of us walk out to bring them in a bit closer for our daily visit at 11am. You’ve heard many stories of this over the years but I thought I’d just put together some of my best photos. Its been a pretty snowy winter this year with the odd stormbound day preventing us from getting up the hill at all but some of the days we have been up it is absolutely glorious and by far the best place to be in the whole country (In my eye anyway)

There are always the same ones leading the way – Fly, Caddis, Kara and Okapi but some newer ones are starting to show a bit more greed in their characters and coming up front more and more. Some of these ones are Brimmick, Morven and Lora. Through January they are always super keen and come from anywhere to a call. However, as the winter goes on and into the spring they become less and less reluctant to come charging down the hill when we call them. This is because they are pregnant and sometimes the thought of staying where they are on that nice ridge seems like the better option. When this is the case we walk right out to them, one of us will lead them in while the other walks along at the back keeping them moving. They never object at this point, especially when they realise a lovely bag of food is at the other end!

The dogs also get to join us for part of this walk every morning. Sookie and TIree are allowed to come so far then they know they have to wait wherever they are asked to wait until we return with the reindeer. Reindeer and dogs don’t mix well and our dogs are very respectful of this and keep a low profile whenever the reindeer are around. Sometimes we are gone for a couple of hours but you can be sure the dogs will be exactly where we left them, waiting eagerly for our return! Needless to say there is two very excited dogs when we do come back.
I hope you enjoy my photos as much as I enjoyed going out and bringing the reindeer in daily and taking the photos.

First off, I’m not talking about the reindeer in that heading. Reindeer only fly at Christmas time after Santa has given them the magic powder and our lovely reindeer don’t attack.

I am of course talking about the flying mini beasts – flies, bugs and, the worst of the worst, midges. Scotland wouldn’t be Scotland without those little terrors, and they are a sign that summer has finally arrived here in Cairngorm, but they aren’t my friends.

No one here likes the midge, including the reindeer. With the heat rising above 20°C and them still having some of their winter coat, our boys are feeling the heat. In hot weather we often give them access to the shed to hide from the heat – you’d be amazed how many come running out at feeding time.

They are also bothered by the flies and midges, but there’s not much we can do there. As much as I’d like to eradicate midge for both my own and the reindeer’s comfort, they are an important food source for birds, toads and frogs, and bats.

Our boys cope with the midges fairly well; in the paddocks they hide under our shelter shed and up on the hill avoid stagnant pools where midges breed and shake to get rid of the biting buggers. Sometimes it’s like watching a little reindeer dance: they stomp their back foot a few times, then the other, a little shake, a few more stomps, and then if the midges are really ferocious, they’ll burst off in a sprint, jumping and kicking the air. It’s quite funny to watch!

We also spotted Oryx doing something a bit odd. It was the end of a visit, and we were heading to the gate to leave the enclosure. A few boys followed us, no doubt thinking there’d be more food. There’s a large mud bath just at the gate, which usually the reindeer don’t bother with, but this time Oryx got into the big puddle and just stood there. He seemed pretty content, so he was left to his own devices while Fran and I did some poo picking (the glamorous lives we lead). Eventually he decided his spa treatment was finished and got out of the mud bath. He looked ridiculous with mud socks up to his ankles, but he seemed pretty happy with himself.

It’s known that red deer wallow, or bathe in mud, but the cause for this is still unknown. Some think it may be to reduce ectoparasites, while others believe it is to cool down. I’m not sure it’s ever been recorded in reindeer before (a quick Google search didn’t come up with much) but I think Oryx may have been trying to avoid the midges biting at his legs. Either that or he fancied a quick mud treatment at the ‘spa de le Cairngorm’.

Since 1981, reindeer and in particular, the Cairngorm reindeer have taken up a very large portion of my daily life and I have not regretted one bit of it. Along side raising family, earning a living from our reindeer herd and in more recent years branching out into hill farming, reindeer have been for me a daily source of huge enjoyment, sometimes despair and always physical labour, a life I wouldn’t swap for anything.

The early days of rushing around ‘doing it all myself’ are luckily over and I am blessed with a band dedicated fellow reindeer herders to share the work load, caring for the reindeer, finding strays and welcoming visitors to the centre. Some people think I have ‘retired to the farm’! Well I can assure you it is a very ‘active retirement’ if I have.

Then last October I became a Granny, a stage in my life I always hoped would happen and luckily for me it has. Hamish, now 8 months old, is no doubt giving his parents the run around but for me he is just delightful and any interaction with the reindeer gives me even more pleasure. Just recently Emily and Hamish came to help me feed the animals on the farm. Young Hamish was the star of the show, mingling with the young bull reindeer as they got their breakfast and even got a shot of riding Boris and ‘surfing’ on Paintpot as both of them happily ate out of the feed bag. History has been repeated and no doubt there will be many more déjà vu’s for me as Hamish enjoys growing up among a herd of very special reindeer.

Tilly