Roaming freely since 1952
We often get asked by visitors what we do when we’re not up leading the Hill Trips. Being a Scottish reindeer herder is a really varied job, and in the past year as we’ve moved into our new building it has been even more so! Here are a few photos from the past few months:
Andi
It’s well known that I have soft spots for a lot of reindeer, often if I have worked closely with them during free range missions or out on Christmas tours etc. However, one cohort I’m particularly fond of is the ‘hats’- reindeer born in spring 2021. In May 2021, I returned to reindeer herding after three years of trying out something different. My return was wonderful, and I instantly got stuck into the busy calving season. Just like the reindeer born in 2017 (the Authors and Poets) which was my first ever calving season, I’m very fond of the 2021 cohort, particularly as it was a relatively small calving. The three remaining females, Beanie, Beret, and Trilby are all different in both looks and personality.
In spring 2024 all three of them had their own calves – another generation to become attached to! They’ve all done so well, especially as first-time mums. This blog is just an excuse to show lots of lovely photos of them!
Beanie
Beanie was born on the 19th of May 2021 to mum Gloriana. She has an older brother called Butter and a younger brother called Rocket. When she was a bit younger and still finding her place in the herd Beanie would often be found towards the back and would get pushed around a bit by the older cows. For that reason I think some herders (not mentioning any names…) would spoil her with extra handfeed as we’d feel a little sorry for her! Beanie has now grown up to be a very friendly and greedy lass and is often found lurking behind after a Hill Trip fluttering her eyelashes for extra feed, ever hopeful. I have to use all my resolve not to cave – she definitely doesn’t need it! Beanie had her first calf in 2024, a large male who we named Coffee. He’s grown into one of the biggest calves of the year.
Beret
Beret is a great character! Her mum Brie is probably the smallest cow in the herd, but she has been a highly successful breeding female over the years so Beret has several siblings including Cicero, Sorbet, and Latte. Whilst Beret was growing up, herders would often come back from a Hill Trip reporting that “she doesn’t know how to be a reindeer”! It took her a while to learn how to hand feed from visitors and there was one memorable winter season where she would jump on visitors for no reason. It was always in a harmless and innocent way but understandably could be intimidating for our visitors! She’s now learnt “how to reindeer” and has matured into a lovely, friendly, dependable lass. In May 2024 she became a mother for the first time – a big female calf who we named Brew who has the tendency to be rather opinionated about everything!
Beret is a firm favourite of herder Lisette and has her own blog here.
Trilby
Trilby is a lovely lass! Her mum was a reindeer called Screel who sadly died very unexpectantly in November 2021, leaving Trilby as an orphan. However, by 6 months old Trilby was big and strong enough to not require any special care from us, so she remained in the hills with the herd. We obviously looked out for her and spoilt her where we could! She perhaps doesn’t stand out as much as Beanie and Beret, maybe it’s because she is ‘normal coloured’ and for a while didn’t have a particularly strong personality. But now she’s almost 4 years old her family genetics are kicking in and she’s becoming more confident. Last winter was often at the front of the herd – so I’m hoping she’ll be a future leader! She’s friendly and greedy so we can always catch her out making her easy to work with. Her big sister Scully has serious attitude so maybe Trilby will follow in Scully’s footsteps! This year Trilby had a wee female calf who we named Tetley, so far Tetley is generally sweet-natured but I think has some attitude lurking fairly close to the surface!
Ruth
March has been a great month for us here at the Centre. We’ve become so used to working in the new Centre it’s hard to imagine life working from Reindeer House! March is always a relatively quiet month for visitors so it’s meant an excellent ratio of reindeer to people on our daily Hill Trips. Things will start getting busier in April with the school holidays, and reindeer will be back in our Paddocks from Saturday 29th of March. The Paddocks will be a work in progress for some time as we continue to landscape, but at least the reindeer will be back on display for folks to see! Have a read here for up to date info about what’s on offer in the Paddocks: https://www.cairngormreindeer.co.uk/paddocks/.
Here’s lots of lovely photos of some of our gorgeous reindeer taken throughout the month!
Ruth
All summer our cows and calves free-range in the Cairngorms. Finding all the best spots to graze and generally keeping themselves to themselves. At the end of the summer, the temperature starts to drop on the tops of the hills, this brings the reindeer lower down and coincides with us bringing the cows and calves back into the enclosure. We bring them in partly so we can train the calves, who are now 3-4 months old and so we can bring the females in for the rut, which is held in the hill enclosure.
For many of the reindeer, bringing them in consists of spying a group of them on the lower slopes of Cairngorm. Calling them, catching a couple of the adults and walking them into the enclosure with any calves following through the gate. For a few of the reindeer things are a little trickier. Some of them walk off the hills into different glens and have to be fetched in Brenda, our livestock truck. If these groups are adults then it is easy enough to catch them and walk them into the truck to bring them home again. Sometimes though, the group includes calves, who are not yet halter trained. That’s when things get a little trickier.
In this case our group consisted of almost all adults apart from Beanie’s calf, who we have named Coffee. I had seen Beanie and Coffee earlier in the week and he had been very shy (fair enough having not seen many people all summer), he hadn’t wanted to follow Beanie and the other reindeer that I had haltered up and eventually I had let Beanie go so that she could go and find Coffee. I knew that catching him would need a bit of patience.
I headed out into the hills, up through the woodland (passing this beautiful bumble bee who I thought deserved a mention) and managed to find the group of reindeer. Ironically Gaelic name of the hill I found them on translates as the ‘hill of the gathering’. I was delighted to see that the entire group were very friendly and greedy, setting a good example to young Coffee. I knew I had a good couple of hours to win him over before Ruth and Isla could come out to meet me and help with the actual catching as they were currently taking the morning hill trip. That left me with a very wonderful job, hang out with a lovely herd of reindeer, eat my lunch and generally try to be calm and approachable.
For the first hour or so, Beanie and the other greedy girls were at my side at all times. Coffee stayed within view but a good distance away. Over the next couple of hours he got closer and closer until he was within a couple of feet of me, he even started kicking my rucksack at one point. Rude!
Fairly soon after this a hill walker came past and chatted to me, Coffee ran off at first but then fairly quickly re-appeared clearly realising that he wasn’t a threat – all great desensitisation. Next, Ruth and Isla both arrived. Again Coffee was a little unsure at first, but very quickly came back over to investigate. Ruth managed to hide her body behind Beanie and get a hold of the Coffee’s back leg, after which I was able to put a halter on him. Inevitably, Coffee was pretty unimpressed at first and spent the first few minutes pulling on the rope. He walked him off the hill along with Beanie and 4 other young females. By the time we had reached the woodland, he was munching away on mushrooms and seemed to mostly have forgotten about the halter around his face.
We drove the reindeer back to Glenmore and walked him up to our hill enclosure which is where he is just now still. It can be a bit of a baptism of fire catching a calf out on the hill like that but doesn’t affect their training. Coffee has spent the last couple of months in our hill enclosure getting tamer and tamer and more recently, has been halter trained properly. If you’d like to read back on how we halter train our calves, then read this blog, written way back in 2015.
Lotti