Roaming freely since 1952
With a herd of 150 reindeer, nearly all of whom are growing and casting a pair of antlers every year (exceptions include 2-year-old Juniper who doesn’t grow any, 16-year-old Dixie who only grows one, and 2-year-old Holy Moley who also only grows a single antler), it’s fair to say that we see our share of antlers. From that we’ve figured out some interesting uses for them as the following pictures show… although some photos may contain red deer antler as well as antler from reindeer…
Harry
We are always getting asked to take part in various filming and photography projects so nothing really surprises us anymore when someone sends an email or gives us a call with a slightly quirky request.
A lot of you will have seen ‘A Baby Reindeer’s First Christmas’ starring Holy Moley. This is by far the longest stint of filming we have ever done in one go taking three months. Most of the time a crew will just come up for one day, or even half a day to get a quick piece to fit into their program. Sometimes we are asked to go on location somewhere else with the reindeer. Andi and I worked for a while down south at a private zoo which as well as caring for the animals it involved taking them onto film sets so we are quite used to it. There can be a lot of sitting around so now that I make the rules I am pretty ‘on it’ with our timings as the last thing I want is for the reindeer to have to sit around all day waiting for the actors to be ready so they get a set time frame now to work with us.
Some of our sets have included an Ann Summers photoshoot with models in the Christmas wear. Luckily the reindeer just had to stand nearby and look pretty, which they did beautifully may I add! Last year we were asked to an American short film where the reindeer were portrayed as ‘wild’ so we were in some lovely woodland on the west of Scotland. We did mention to the producers that reindeer aren’t natural to this area but I think the film was just a Christmassy crowd pleaser so they weren’t picky when it came to native species. We’ve worked with fashion models both up on the mountain and also out on location. If I’m totally honest I can’t remember what they were advertising but I can tell you the clothes they were wearing weren’t exactly in keeping with reindeer and their natural habitat… in fact the models must have been freezing!
For a kids TV drama I drew the short straw and had to dress up as a Viking, or at least I think it was a Viking. The show was about a Viking Princess and my colleagues took great delight in having a good laugh at me with some fairly random clothes on! Our reindeer have been part of photoshoots advertising cars. Audi, Landrover and Jaguar have had our reindeer pose next to their fancy pants vehicles.
On the whole, however, we tend to do a one-on-one chat with a presenter who is visiting the area. In the past we’ve worked with Ben Fogle, Ray Mears, Bill Oddy, Susan Calman, Matt Baker, Katy Hill, Michaela Strachan, Gordon Buchanan, Elain Smith, James Martin, Bear Grylls and many more. We try to get Tilly to do these chats as she’s so great on TV but inevitably either myself or one of my colleagues will be roped in. We don’t tend to have to chat about anything out of the ordinary, just aren’t they lovely and tame, we mention some adaptations, their names and in general just enjoy spending time with the reindeer on the hill.
So, there is a bit of insight to another part of our work with the reindeer. I love working closely with the reindeer like this as you get to know them really well individually and we already know what great characters they are so it’s easy to show them off and be proud of them!
Fiona
At 12 years old I can’t believe how time has passed and Hamish is now an ‘old boy’! I remember the day he was born as I was the very first person to see him. This includes his mother Rusa because while she was calving she couldn’t manage on her own and I had to assist in pulling him out. A combination of Rusa only being a young mum herself at just 2 years old she wasn’t fully grown and Hamish being a big boy meant he got a little stuck on exit! This was the first ever time I had to assist a reindeer cow calving so with strict instructions from the vet I felt my way around and managed to pull him out, and even better he was un-scathed but the whole ordeal. Because of the nature of our herd the reindeer calve out on the mountain so for a vet to come out to help too much time would have passed and either cow or calf would then be at risk, so I had to crack on, there was no other option!
In Hamish’s first few weeks he spent a little time here in our paddock area so we could keep an eye on the two of them. This is when he got his name. We don’t name the calves until the autumn but as we spent extra time with him Hamish got his name sooner than the others. He then joined the herd free ranging on the Cairngorms for the summer and came back looking great. Rusa was a good mum, very attentive and they were never far apart from each other.
Hamish has grown into a real character in our herd and one of our trusty old pros when it comes to Christmas events. In his hay day he looked fab with great big antlers and always fat as butter… Hamish LOVES his food! A trait passed down from Rusa for sure. But now he is 12 years old he’s starting to look his age. He’s mainly based at our hill farm over the summer months or on our hill grazing during the winter, Hamish is enjoying the easy life. He does pop over here now and again, but his visits are brief nowadays just lasting a few days.
With Christmas just around the corner we may well call on his expertise to help train the new, younger Christmas reindeer. This requires being harnessed up alongside a newbie and pulling the sleigh. This is done next to our Centre in Glenmore, so the reindeer get used to seeing lots of people and cars. Hamish is the perfect role model for this and if the new Christmas reindeer take a leaf out of his book then they will be great!
Fiona
Late summer/autumn is always a very exciting time of the year for a reindeer herder. It’s when we start seeing the cows and calves more regularly after they’ve spent the summer free ranging in the hills.
Each morning we drive up the ski road to Cairngorm Base Station and have a spy for any free ranging reindeer. One morning in mid-September Fiona, Sheena and myself were checking the roads when we spotted a small herd of reindeer. Exciting! Even from a distance we instantly knew there was a calf in the group, and we knew she had to belong to a lovely female called Ochil.
Ochil had a white (leucistic) calf back in May, and even though we had three white calves born this year, the other two were already safely in the enclosure with their mums so it just had to be her – our ID skills of calves from over a hundred metres away are not usually that good!
Fiona dropped Sheena and I off to try to get the small herd into the enclosure, whilst she headed back down the hill to carry on with feeding the herd in the enclosure. Mission on!
As we got closer to the herd we were able to identify them all. Three cows (Ochil, Vienna and Roule) and their lovely calves, plus a yearling female called Beanie. I’d not seen any of these reindeer since we let them out to free range back in June, so it was lovely to see them again. They all looked great! The enclosure was about 1.5km away from where we were, across a ridge, over a road, across a burn and up a hill affectionately known by the herders as “Killer Hill”. You can see how our mission unfolded in the following photographs….
Ruth
It started with a Hill Trip. Back in February 2018 my partner took me on a surprise trip to Aviemore and beyond, little did I know that this would result in a lifelong love of reindeer, two volunteering sessions and 3 adoptees!
I have always been an animal person so my partner knew that this would be a winner, but I was completely amazed by these beautiful creatures to the point where I rather embarrassingly burst into tears as we reached the crest of the hill and saw the herd grazing in the snow. Naturally we put the herders through two hours in the cold asking questions and generally staring in awe, and it took only the time between walking back down the hill and into the shop to get my volunteering application at the ready and adopt the lovely Anster!
My first volunteering week was back in August 2019, I turned up super excited to help and I was welcomed with open arms by everyone at Reindeer House. Being the height of the summer holidays, it was hill trips galore and I couldn’t have been happier to throw myself into being a volunteer reindeer herder and guide. I was a little nervous though – what if a visitor had a question I couldn’t answer? It’s amazing though how little a problem that was, with the herders being so lovely, answering my many, many questions and giving me the chance to be as hands on as possible both on the hill in the mornings and down at reindeer house. Suddenly I could hold my own with the questions and was even trusted with a wee bit of the talking by the end of the week. My time on the hill was amazing for many reasons, but especially as I got some great quality time with my adoptee, who was always first in line for a hand feed! I reached the last day so sad to leave (and with another two adoptees as I couldn’t choose between them) but ready to return a year later… Or so I thought!
For reasons I’m sure we all remember well, my 2020 return was unable to go ahead, and continued to be pushed back until finally, I was in the clear to return to Reindeer House in July 2022!
It was lovely to see the friendly faces of the herders again, but this time with a new addition – who should I see coming round the corner, but a tiny calf climbing into the feed bags! I was told all about the lovely Sunny and I couldn’t help but feel that my timing had worked out quite well after all!
Being a returning volunteer allowed me to crack on a little quicker and more confidently which meant that I got even more quality reindeer time! I spent most mornings up on the hill first thing, checking the herd, putting out the feed, checking temperatures and training on the harness. I couldn’t quite believe my luck and the ever-wonderful team helped to guide me along every step of the way.
I was especially lucky to be a part of Sunny’s first ventures into ‘big school’ aka joining all of the boys together for the hill trips. He settled in amazingly well and after a small telling off from some of the yearlings has seemed to find his place among them. Being a volunteer meant that I not only got to spend the hill trips with Sunny, I also got to enjoy walking him to and from the hill, hand rearing (to a lovely chorus of ‘awhhhh’s’ from the visitors) and watching his progress from the beginning to the end of the week.
Though of course Sunny is not only the main event. I threw myself back into my mission to ID as many reindeer as possible on the hill trips and while I’m a huge ways away from the pros, both times I couldn’t believe how quickly you can catch on to the quirks and personalities among the herd that can help you to tell them apart. I have to say though, between lots of new additions to the herd in my three year gap and the transition to summer and winter coats it was a whole lot more of a challenge this time!
Saying this, it was an absolute treat to see how the boys I had got to know so well in my first week had grown and how quickly I recognised them. In 2019, Bond had no antlers and was trying to find his place among his pals in the paddock, now he has a beautiful set and looks like a fully fledged reindeer, Sherlock now has the biggest antlers I have ever seen, many of them now have calves – so much can change in a few years and it’s good to know that while I was cooped up in my flat, the reindeer were still out on the hills living their best lives!
While it’s an amazing experience for anyone, I can honestly say that volunteering not once but twice (so far…) was easily the best decision I ever made, and it is no exaggeration to say it has been life changing. Seeing the team care so diligently for these beautiful animals and how passionate knowledgeable they all are about them and their environment is beyond inspiring. In my other life as a teacher, I returned from my first stint determined to build my students appreciation for the outdoors, for animals, for their world, gained my forest schools qualification and taken steps to bring animals nature to the children and vice versa. It was something I always cared about, but seeing what the herd have achieved gave me the push that I needed to start making these goals a reality. Sharing my experiences, photos and other things I’ve picked up along the way with the children in class has also given me a fair bit of clout in the classroom too – I’ve never had so many reindeer themed Christmas and end of year gifts!
I feel so lucky to have had these opportunities with the herd and the wonderful help everyone in the team to give me the most magical of experiences. I can’t wait to head back up the hills again – just maybe without the three year wait this time…
Hannah
Back on the 27th May 2022, it was the official date, 70 years on, since reindeer set foot in Scotland. So, although we are having an Open Day this October for all the lovely people who adopt one of our reindeer (this weekend, in fact!), this year as a celebration we decided to mark the occasion in May with a very informal get together of local friends and ex, current and future reindeer herders. Future herders being all the babies and children of reindeer herders past and present!
By chance this was also the day that Sofia our lovely friend and ex herder was visiting Scotland for the first time in 4 years. Sofia and her family are Sami from the north of Sweden and also related to Mikel Utsi who co-started the Cairngorm Reindeer Herd, so it was so great she was there. Sally and Ceris came up from north England and I won’t mention everyone’s names who are local as the list would just be too long… let’s just say there were lots of wonderful faces who have been part of the last 70 years of reindeer in Scotland.
During the day in our shop, as well as banners and bunting we had cake and prosecco (and a non-alcoholic version for the drivers) for our visitors to help themselves so if you were booked onto a tour that day this was a massive perk! All our visitors didn’t think twice to join in our celebrations and dig into the treats.
Then in the afternoon we put up a couple of gazebos in our paddock area, put more cake and drinks and later on had a BBQ and salads to soak up the extra prosecco. It was a really lovely afternoon/evening catching up with everyone. Hearing their stories of when they visited or worked here. Some old photos came out and we just chatted the night away. Needless to say, there were a couple of sore heads the next morning.
The kids had a great time, endless cake… what’s not to love! They were burning around on sugar highs with the odd adult trying to keep up. There were many dogs included in the celebrations but luckily they all know each other so while some were persuading people to throw sticks and toys the others were hoovering up left over BBQ. Looking onto a scene of what could only be described as total chaos was actually rather lovely. Seeing familiar friendly faces who have been joined together by our lovely reindeer… We’ve got a lot to thank Dr Lindgren and Mikel Utsi for. If it wasn’t for them then we wouldn’t be lucky enough to be part of the Cairngorm Reindeer Herd and know all these wonderful people.
Fiona
I have been here at the Reindeer Centre (on and off) for eight years now, the last three has been the longest stint I have done with the Reindeer Centre. Now admittedly this is mostly due to Covid, but if it wasn’t for the Reindeer Centre’s generosity in keeping me around as the world went in to lockdown the week that I was meant to be leaving, I probably would never have stuck around and got more involved with the surrounding area.
I’m not one for talking a lot, so here are some of my favourite photos from the past three years with some words.
Olly
Being the most recent person to start working at the Reindeer Centre I am experiencing the day-to-day workings of the Centre throughout the seasons for the first time. I thought I would write about one of my favourite “firsts” to date, which is finding the first calf to be born for the 2022 season. It was a beautiful day at the tail end of April, which happened to be my first day back at work after my usual two days off and Andi’s first day back at work after a holiday. We started our usual morning routine and set off from the house to head up to the enclosure to check on our pregnant cows and feed them, upon feeding the cows we realised that one reindeer was missing, so we grabbed our calving bag which includes: feed for the mother, spot on and antibiotic blue spray for the calf’s naval and made a start on searching the enclosure. For anyone that hasn’t been to our enclosure it is a vast amount of space to search, the perimeter line is 8km in length alone! The missing reindeer was the lovely, four year old, Dante.
We headed along the top ridge of the enclosure to check a well-known calving area up there, but the missing reindeer was nowhere to be seen so we continued climbing to the summit of Silver Mount in search of Dante. Keeping with the theme of many “first” experiences, this was also my first time being on and seeing the summit of Silver Mount, which has glorious views of the Northern Corries, Loch Morlich and down onto Glenmore. Luckily for us, Dante was also at the summit of Silver Mount.
With the easy part over we had to try and see whether Dante had calved or not and for the untrained eye this was a lot harder than it sounds. We could see that the reindeer was focusing on a specific ginger looking spot, but was this a new-born calf or a rock? A question that all herders ask themselves on a regular basis when looking for full grown reindeer, never mind a tiny calf! We were lucky though and the ginger mound began to move which confirmed that we had officially found the first calf of the season (later named Glacée)! Andi headed over to feed the mother, treat the naval of the calf and give spot on to give it protection from those dreaded ticks. Once we had checked that all was ok we headed back down to reindeer house to share the amazing news that our calving season had begun!
At the end of May Dante and her one month old calf headed out to the hills for the summer, along with around half of our other mums and calves. We caught up with them a few times whist they roamed freely in the hills, both mum and daughter seemed to have a great summer as they were always in excellent condition. The pair are now back in our hill enclosure for the autumn where we’ll begin to train Dante’s calf to wear a halter and get to know her personality. Hopefully she’ll grow up to be a big strong girl like her mum, and big sister Mangetout.
Amy
Many years ago, a reindeer herder made a Badge. This Badge was pink, and he wore it with pride. In time he decided to pass it on to another herder, who had done a Worthy Thing that day (what the Worthy Thing actually was has since been lost in the mists of time). However, that herder then took it upon themselves to pass it on once again, to another Worthy Person, and so it is that the Pink Badge of Worthiness came into being.
Or something along those lines anyway. The badge maker at Reindeer House was a very good investment of ours, many years back, and has churned out thousands of the things over the years for kids visiting the Paddocks and having a go at a quiz (we use different quizzes through the year and not all have a badge to make on them, before you get your knickers in a knot about why your family didn’t get the option of badges when you visited). We have, of course, made plenty of badges for ourselves too, and this is how the pink badge started off – it was made from a bright pink post-it note upon which one of us had drawn a smiley face.
I can’t quite remember the full details of exactly how the tradition of passing on the badge came about, but the essence of it is exactly as I’ve written at the start of this blog. The owner of the badge can hold on to it (usually pinning it on their t-shirt/jumper) for as long as they want, and when they feel someone else has gone above and beyond the call of duty, they award them the badge. And then the next person continues, and so on. There are no real rules, no limit on how long you can have it, or how many times; the badge is an item of supreme simplicity.
As I write this the current holder is Ruth, awarded it for managing to get our ancient and decrepit Landrover into 4WD mode on a early morning reindeer retrieval mission! The badge itself is currently in it’s second incarnation, after one too many accidental trips through the washing machine; but I’m not even too sure where Pink Badge 2 came from, as it’s not the size our own badge-maker produces. We’re also not colour blind – we’re well aware that this model is not pink! But in the best tradition the name endures regardless.
At times the badge has been lost, or forgotten about, or unearthed months later on an old jumper in the back of a cupboard. Sometimes it’s just been found on the office pinboard, and no-one has appeared to know how it got there, or who was responsible. Our boss Tilly got it once, but was banned from taking it home with her as we were worried that once it disappeared into the depths of her farmhouse it would never, ever be seen again!
Fiona wishes me to point out that for the first five years she was only ever awarded it once a year, at the end of December, after organising (and surviving) the Christmas tour season, traditionally the busiest time of the year. I myself have been given it for a range of activities, most of which I can’t remember now, but the most memorable was the time I was given it for managing to not throw a printer through the office window. You may laugh, but deep down everyone reading this knows the deep-rooted and boiling fury a malfunctioning printer can incite – what does ‘general error’ even mean?! – so really I feel it was fully justified. I have had a hate-hate relationship with every single printer that has ever lived in the Reindeer House office.
Later that same day, however, Andi managed to extract a section of old fencing wire that had somehow become entangled around the antlers of one of our biggest breeding bulls, Kota, and this was right in the middle of the rutting season when he had morphed from a gentle giant to a raging testosterone-fueled beast. To this day I am therefore still the record-holder for the shortest ownership of the badge.
A lot of the other reasons for receival have been forgotten over the years, but have often included epic catches of ‘wilder’ reindeer, or memorable displays of herding. Olly received it last year for a stupendous and skillful effort of getting Rain and her newborn calf Jimmy into the right area of the hill enclosure after she had led Nell and myself on a merry (and ultimately unsuccessful) dance the previous day until a good two hours after we should have finished work. Then there was an interesting episode last Christmas when Sherlock got his antlers caught in the fairy lights of our Paddock shelter, and Joe spent about 45 minutes de-tangling him – again no mean feat with an enormous bull. One antler had come off already, but much to Joe’s annoyance when finally freed, Sherlock wandered out the shed, shook his head and the other promptly fell off! It’s completely normal for a bull to cast his antlers at this time of year, but 45 minutes earlier would have saved everyone a lot of hassle.
So if you visit us and notice a herder with the Pink Badge pinned to their shirt, then note that this is a Worthy Person, and should therefore be due the utmost respect. Or maybe it’s just me, and I’ve refrained from throwing another misbehaving electronic item through a window.
Hen
Andi has recently been working on digitising some of the oldest photos of the Cairngorm reindeer herd. They’re all fascinating to look at, but it’s also been interesting comparing some similarities and differences over the years. From forest plantations to roads to a funicular railway – there’s been a lot of changes in the area in the time that the reindeer have been here. In this blog I’ve done my best to align some more recent photos with older ones of the same views, to give you all a bit of an idea of what these changes look like.
Harry