Whilst some of you may have heard of the pastime of geocaching, others may not, so I’ll start my story with a wee definition to give you all some background. Geocaching.com, the hub for geocachers the world over, describes it as: “Geocaching is a real-world, outdoor treasure hunting game using GPS-enabled devices. Participants navigate to a specific set of GPS coordinates and then attempt to find the geocache (container) hidden at that location.” I have to say that I prefer the more frank description of “Using multi million pound technology to find tupperware in the woods”!
Herder Eve delighted by finding her first geocache.
I first started geocaching in the Lake district about 5 years ago, and became addicted enough to have now found nearly 1000 caches, right across the country. It is a great way to explore a new place – many people will set trails of geocaches that lead you round a route – and a great excuse to get people old and young out into the great outdoors. Whilst a lot of the caches that you come across are fairly mundane, there can be real surprises in them, and sometimes incredible containers – for example when the cache is hidden inside an old snail shell! Sneaky!
The cache at the Reindeer Centre
A few years ago, myself and fellow herder-and-geocaching-partner-in-crime Hen set out a trail of our own cleverly disguised caches starting at the Reindeer Centre in Glenmore. As the “owner”, it is our responsibility to maintain the caches in good condition. Checking the cache right outside the Centre recently, I was pleased to find what is known as a “trackable”. This is a small object with a unique code on it, so it can be looked up online. Trackables are often set a mission, for example to travel from one end of the country to the other, or to only visit caches near rivers. One cacher will leave it in a cache, and the next person to find the cache can choose to move it along to another cache.
Cheese shows off how beautiful the Cairngorm reindeer are!
I was amazed to find that this particular trackable geocoin had been “released” in Germany almost 10 years ago, and was named “The Cairngorm Reindeer Centre Geocoin”. Its mission was to travel all the way to Scotland and meet the reindeer here. Unbeknown to me, it was enroute before I’d even heard of geocaching, and before there was a cache placed here at the Centre. 10 years is also an amazingly long time for a trackable coin to travel without getting lost or stolen.
Gloriana with the coin – “Is it edible?”
Gloriana and Cheese were more than happy to pose with the coin, which will soon be “released” to make its way back towards its owners in Germany. Let’s hope its run of luck remains for long enough for it to return safely home. It just shows that you never do know what surprises you may encounter.
Now that I’ve revealed my complete nerdiness, if you’re inspired to try something new, have a look at www.geocaching.com and see what geocaches are near you – you’ll very likely find that there is one hidden on the corner of your street or in a local park, and anyone can get involved using a smartphone or GPS. Who can say no to a free treasure hunt??!
It is the morning of April 29th, and it is the calm before the storm – the reindeer calving season. All was quiet this morning on the hill, but a sea of large pregnant bellies greeted Sarah and I in the enclosure, ready and waiting…
Lots of massive bellies!
Having spent the first few months of the year free-ranging out on the mountains, last week we brought the cows into the enclosure to sort them out ready for calving. Non-pregnant females went back out to free-range for the rest of the spring and summer, while the pregnant ones were moved into the main part of the enclosure (after a frantic fixing of the fences after the winter storms!). They will now stay in for the next 3 – 4 weeks but once the majority have calved, they will go out on to the free-range to join the single females out there for the summer. While it’s lovely for us to have the cute wee calves around for a while, ultimately they will do better out on the higher areas of the mountains, up away from the biting insects, and so for this reason we get them out onto the free-range as soon as possible after calving.
‘Stop taking photos and give us the feed…’
The East Enclosure (the main area inside the enclosure where we take the hill trips to) becomes the pre-natal unit, with one by one as they calve, the reindeer being moved through to the Bottom Corridor (the smaller area immediately inside the main visitor gate) – the ‘nursery’. The cows generally just get on with calving themselves, and older females, knowing the score, have been known to bring their new calves to the gate into the Bottom Corridor (BC) themselves, ready to move into the nursery! Younger or more inexperienced cows often give us a bit of a run around, marching away with their little one trotting at their heels – telling us in no uncertain terms to keep our distance. We spread out and act like sheepdogs, herding the cow gently in the right direction and through the gate into the BC.
Most of the females have now cast their 2015 antlers, but there’s a few still hanging on in there, like Wapiti.
The reindeer in the enclosure I feel a bit sorry for just now are the female yearlings, still with their mums and totally unaware they are about to plummet from apple of their mum’s eyes to second best, as their mum’s attention is turned to their new siblings. The yearlings are always very confused by this, and often stand despondently nearby, watching the new calf suckling. By the summer though they have come to terms with this new development, and have re-joined their mums to make little family parties.
Yearling Morven glued at the hip to her mum Spy – poor Morven’s about to get a nasty shock when Spy calves!An old photo – this is Chime way back in about 2010 – but look at the size of that belly!
So there we have it. The reindeer are in the correct place, the staff bets are in for first cow to calve, the calving rucksack is ready for early morning expeditions around the enclosure (complete with emergency chocolate bars) and the stage is set. Unfortunately winter has sneezed on us all again, but hopefully it’s its last spluttering cough of the season – we, and the reindeer, are ready for spring!
One of my favourite reindeer when I first arrived was Arnish. To start with this was possibly because she was so distinctive as she didn’t grow any antlers, making her one of the very first reindeer in the herd that I learnt, but quickly my reasoning changed and simply became because she was just so, well, cool.
Arnish in 2007, aged 10
Arnish was, quite simply, a dude. Everyone liked her, and she was a tame, friendly female. Some of the females in the herd skulk around in the background, not particularly wild nor particularly tame, spending most of their time out on the Cairngorm free-range where we barely ever see them. But some, like Arnish, always seem to be around, and spend a good bit of their time in the hill enclosure too as well as on the free-range, when it is easier to get to know them as we see them daily.
Arnish in 2009
Antlers are a symbol of dominance in reindeer, generally the bigger the better. A reindeer with no antlers should therefore be very low in the hierarchy, but it seems no-one told Arnish this. A great lump of a female, thickset and solid, with a head the size of a male reindeer’s, Arnish ruled the roost and was one of the leaders of the herd, or at least she was by the time I arrived on the scene. At this point she was 10 years old already and only needed to look at a group of reindeer for them to part like the Dead Sea to make way for her! If all else failed, she just ploughed into them headfirst, somewhat resembling a hairy bulldozer. No-one messed with Arnish.
Hanging out with Arnish
Her lack of antlers had one significant downside, for us at least. If Arnish got her head into the feedbag you were carrying, it was nigh on impossible to get her out. When any other greedy, tame reindeer push their way into a feedbag, we can remove them but hoicking them out by an antler but this just wasn’t possible with Arnish – there were no handles! The battle was lost already. I should add that most of the time we never touch a reindeer’s antlers, certainly not when they are in velvet, but when in their bone form with no feeling needs must at times!
Arnish and Jaffa, 2009
Arnish may be gone now, but she’s left behind a legacy in the form of Addax, Jaffa and Svalbard. Daughters Addax and Jaffa have gone on to have calves of their own, and son Svalbard, along with Addax’s own son Monty, are part of our team of ‘Christmas reindeer’ – males who are trained to harness and go out on tour in November and December.
Arnish and Svalbard, June 2011
Svalbard was Arnish’s last calf, and there’s a wee story about his name to tell. He turned up without his mum in October 2011, and we named him Meccano, to fit into the ‘Games and Pastimes’ theme of that year. Arnish had passed away out on the mountains, but at 4 months old her calf was just about old enough to survive without her. Short and dumpy, Meccano looked very much like a Svalbard reindeer, the sub-species of the Svalbard Islands which have evolved shorter legs than their migratory cousins. Try as we might, the nickname stuck, and Meccano became Svalbard.
Svalbard has grown into a strapping lad!
With Addax’s daughter Parmesan quite possibly pregnant just now with her first calf, Arnish’s bloodline looks set to continue for a good while yet. Every descendant so far has produced antlers, but the antlerless trait can skip generations so maybe watch this space.
Lace still proudly wearing her antlers… we’ll see if we can find them when she casts them!
Each year every member of our 150-strong herd (well, with just a handful of exceptions… Malawi, Dixie…) grows a pair of antlers. And every winter, at some point between November and May, those same antlers are naturally cast so the owner can grow a (theoretically) bigger, better set the next year.
Over the winter months, our reindeer are all roaming free on either the Cromdale or Cairngorm mountains, so there are many antlers that ping off into the heather and snow and are either never seen again, or are picked up by a lucky hillwalker. But plenty of the antlers are found by us, collected and brought back to the Centre, then usually handed over to Hen. She has (foolishly?) taken on the task of sorting out what happens to them next.
The first of the antlers for the year…
First job is to identify which reindeer the antler belongs to. Sometimes this is easy – perhaps we saw two reindeer having a tussle and witnessed the moment the antler parted ways from its owner. Some antlers are pretty distinctive and when whoever found it walks into the office with it, usually displayed held on their own head and asking, “Who am I??” there is a chorus of correct answers from the other herders present. But sometimes it is a fairly standard shape and size, and then it comes down to skimming through our photo archive (we aim to keep a recent photo of every member of the herd) until it is spotted in its previous position attached to a head.
Once the past owner of the antler is identified, first port of call is our “Antlers wanted” list – if you adopt a reindeer and fancy owning a set of their antlers just drop us an email and we can pop you on it – bear in mind there are only a maximum of two antlers available each year though, and we frequently don’t find both! Otherwise we write to any adopters of that reindeer to see if they’re interested in buying it, on a “first come, first served” basis – whilst this is the fairest way we can do it, it often leads to several phonecalls on the same day asking to buy it, and we can only sell it to the first respondant! Finally, if none of the adopters want it, or indeed if the reindeer has no adopters, then it goes for sale in our shop here at the Centre, usually in about June.
Various wearers of the same set of antlers: Kota, Imogen and HenA slightly less impressive offering from Israel this year…
Antlers come in all shapes and sizes, from big handsome bull antlers (we usually only have one or two large sets available each year) to fancy cow antlers, and calf “twigs” to furry broken castrate antlers. We’ve already started working through the pile of antlers that we’ve found this year, and the biggest set without a doubt belonged to our breeding bull Kota. One of his adopters was delighted to purchase the set, but as they don’t live locally, the next challenge was packaging them up to post. As you can imagine, transforming a pair of unwieldly, bony objects into a postable package is easier said than done… We first wrap the points in bubble wrap, not to protect the antler (it’s solid bone) but to stop it bursting out of the package, and then pop the whole thing in an empty barley bag (or two, in the case of Kota’s set). Barley bags are super as they have two strong layers of paper, and we’re helping the environment out by recycling. As an added bonus, recipients often find a few stray flakes of barley! Though on the downside, sometimes the posting out of antlers is delayed because the reindeer haven’t eaten enough for us to use the next bag of barley in our feed mix!
Kota’s antlers being packaged for posting
With a large pile of antlers still to work through, and plenty left on the heads of the reindeer on the mountains, its likely that it’ll be summer before we finish finding new homes for them. All of the funds raised from the sales go straight back into the day-to-day care of the herd, so it both helps us out and hopefully brings a lot of pleasure to anyone who buys them. Every antler is unique and its great to have something sustainable which allows people to own a “bit” of a reindeer!
Andi
Please note – there’s now a newer, more up-to-date blog about how we sell antlers, which you can read here.
I thought maybe I’d start an occasional blog series remembering particular characters in the herd who are no longer with us, because some readers amongst you may have met them once upon a time, and those of you that didn’t can at least have a brief glimpse of some of the most memorable reindeer from our herd.
Flake with her beautiful antlers
I scrolled through our photo archive of reindeer no longer with us, and my eye alighted on Flake. Well, there is a fine place to start! Plenty of memorable things about Flake, and what a fabulous reindeer she was over the years. I first met her in summer 2009, having been away for several months, and arrived back and headed up to the hill enclosure for the first time. Most of the reindeer there I recognised, or managed to work out pretty quickly, but who was this bull with a blue ear tag? Quite narrow, upright antlers compared to some, but still a very good size, and ‘clean’ in design rather than the chaotic, many tined antlers of the castrate males. I was flummoxed. Turns out it was Flake, in the enclosure for the summer months rather than out free-ranging like the other females, due to her calf Diddly (who we’ll get to in a tick).
Flake was a beautiful reindeer
Flake’s fabulous antlers set her apart from many of the other cows, as they were much more elaborate than the average female set and a very decent size most years. In 2009 however, the year I first saw her, they were a particularly fine set and there is a specific reason for that…
Flake was a notoriously bad breeding female. Her calving record, filed away on our computer here, is basically a list of disaster after disaster, from stillborn calves, to ones that got stuck and needed pulling out by the vet, to premature twins, you name it. In 2011 she produced a calf who had a problem with his joints, probably not helped by the fact that Flake had calved right next to a large boulder which he had promptly got stuck beneath! The entry on her records for her final calf Brave, born in 2012, reads ‘Normal!!!!’.
But before that, in 2009, there was Diddly. Born prematurely, she was tiny, so much so that she couldn’t reach Flake’s udder. Even if she had been able to, Flake didn’t produce any milk that year anyway, so right from the start we had to hand-rear her, bottle feeding through the night to start with.
Heather working hard to look after Diddly, while Flake stands byDiddly was so tiny!
Flake and Diddly started off in the paddocks, then eventually moved up to the hill enclosure for the remainder of the summer and the autumn. And that is the reason for Flake’s great antlers – while we slaved away feeding Diddly for the first 5 months of her life, Flake basically sat back and let us do all the work – a ‘designer mum’. All the energy going into her body from the feed we lug up the hill every day went straight to her antler growth rather than to milk production. The antlers of the other females, out on the high tops foraging for themselves, all showed the detrimental effects of the effort of raising a calf, being smaller and wigglier, but not Flake. She resided in state in the hill enclosure all summer, fat as butter and with fancy headgear, with a queue of reindeer herders tending to her every need and raising her calf for her!
Flake and Diddly when I first met them in August 2009
Flake with the grown up Diddly in February 2011
Flake passed away in 2013, an old girl by that point. Very sadly, Diddly followed later that year, but not before producing her son Crowdie, who is now nearly 3 years old and a great fun wee reindeer. Diddly was an interesting character in her own right as she never produced any antlers at all, remaining bald for her whole life, a little quirk that sometimes happens with female reindeer.
‘Christmas’ for us reindeer herders, doesn’t just mean Dec 25th, but rather the entire period of November and December. After 7-8 weeks of (organised) chaos, hectic days and usually less than desirable weather, Christmas Day itself always seems a rather incidental event at the end of it all! While tour is frequently great fun, it is also extremely tiring and by the end we’re all ready to heave a huge sigh of relief and pack away everything for another 10 months. Come January, should one more person jokingly ask a herder which one Rudolph is, then so help them God…
Topi has a quick nap on my shoulder whilst waiting for the parade to start
While up to eight teams of reindeer are away on the weekends in November and December, the weekdays are quieter, and most teams return home. We have around 45 big male castrate reindeer who are trained to harness, four of which will travel to each event along with two 6 to 7 month old calves, making teams of six. So even on the busiest weekends there are still reindeer at home taking their turn to ‘hold the fort’, and no single reindeer will go out to events week upon week. Many teams go out only for a night or two at the weekend, returning home straight away afterwards, while a few head away for longer but 2.5 weeks at a time is always the longest stint we ever do with the same six reindeer.
Spider looking incredibly relaxed at an event
Obviously, being based in the Cairngorms means that most trips away on tour for a ‘long stint’ start with the long haul down the A9 and onward, so a network of ‘bases’ across the UK to keep our travelling time down is a necessity. Our two main big bases are in the Lake District and South Wales, but we also have three in the central and southern Scotland, plus another five or so in England. Most are farms, so the reindeer are housed in a large, airy barn or undercover yard while we herders have accommodation on site too, usually in the form of a self-catering cottage. This then enables us to travel much shorter distances to our events, and (like us!) reindeer require days off while on tour, so the bases provide safe and secure locations for them then.
Origami, Duke, Hamish, Tanner, Aonach and Fyrish chilling out at our Welsh baseWe’ve been visiting some of our bases for years now, so our hosts are well used to their unusual winter guests!
Grass is far too rich for a reindeer’s diet, so while we let them get some grazing each day while exercising them, we don’t leave them on grass for too long at any one time. Our usual routine is to get up and to take the reindeer out for a stretch of the legs first thing. At some bases this involves a run on halters, but at most we can let them loose in a field and they will hurtle around ‘dancing’ (reindeer don’t buck like excited horses, but will leap in the air, spin around and bounce about!). Then it’s back to the barn for their breakfast, while we poo-pick, refill water bowls and sort the lorry ready for the next event. Then it’s breakfast time for us!
Hamish, Origami, Aonach, Duke and Fyrish (plus Tanner) burst out from the barn, down the field…… and away up the next one!It’s always reassuring when they come back! We pop their head collars on whilst out exercising in case anyone decides to adventure a little too far, but for the rest of the time at base we take them off.After a few minutes thundering around letting off steam, they like to settle down to graze and potter.Stalking whichever one of us has the bucket of lichen is their favourite pastime
Aside from looking after the reindeer, base days can go one of two ways, depending on your team partner is. Should it be Mel or Sally (among others) then it might become what has become known as ‘boot-camp’ – an energetic day of walking or cycling. For the lazier or less fit amongst us (primarily pointing the finger at myself here), a day of pottering around local towns, drinking coffee and sight-seeing seems more appealing! We do however, have to help out Reindeer House on occasion, who will sometimes send us lists of letters to write to go into adoption packs – Christmas is a hectic time for those left behind at base.
Lotti, Hen and Abby on letter writing duty!
And then there are the events. They range from shopping centres to light switch-ons, town centre parades to private functions, and are a way of raising the money needed for the reindeer to continue their free-ranging lifestyle on the Cairngorms. Reindeer are a herd animal, hence why we never take less than four out together (usually six), and as they all go out to events as calves then they are very relaxed when we take them out and about again as full-grown adults, as they’ve seen it all before. They are great fun on tour and we always return home with endless stories from each event: how each reindeer behaved when pulling the sleigh, who fell asleep into their feed bowl, who kept trying to eat the tinsel on the sleigh, and who tried to eat nick a box of Celebrations from the Queen’s head groom at Windsor (stand up and take a bow, Fergus…).
For just six weeks a year, the normal job description of a reindeer herder changes a little, and many of us start driving massive trucks around the country. Well, 7.5 tonne trucks anyway, which are pretty big in comparison to our wee 3 tonne truck (affectionately named Brenda) who we use for day-to-day transport for the rest of the year.
My truck for both this season and last, nicknamed the “Coo” as her number plate ends in KUH
On a busy Christmas weekend we can have up to 8 teams of reindeer and herders out and about across the country, so we hire 5 flatbed trucks and put our own specially designed and built boxes on the back, each with ample space for sleigh, kit, feed and of course most importantly, the reindeer themselves. There’s even internal lights! Each of the 5 boxes is a slightly different design, and over the years everyone has gotten attached to a particular box. Alex’s box is the most unique in design, with the space for the feed and equipment running down the side of the reindeer compartment. Great for Alex, who is tall, but not ideal for someone short like Hen, who can’t reach far enough over the barrier to grab the bags at the bottom! Fiona’s box has a rather heavy ramp, again difficult if you’re shorter, though Fi has the strength to heave it up herself. The “Post Box” did indeed start out its life as a Royal Mail box, and still has a few bits of red paint! It has a roller door into the sleigh compartment which takes a fair bit of practice and agility to get open and shut! The Metal box is a little smaller than some of the others so tends to be used for more local events – fitting enough feed in it for 2 weeks away can leave you short of room to move.
And then there is the newest box, nicknamed the Royal box as it seemed so posh and shiny when first made, and the name stuck. This is my favourite box, and having taken it out on tour for the last few years I’m now very familiar with its quirks. Our ramp has been tensioned beautifully (i.e. quite a lot) so it’s easy for us shorties to put up, but also meaning that you can unintentionally “ramp-surf” as you’re opening up the back gates, finding yourself hovering several feet in the air and having to gingerly edge your weight down the ramp until it touches down.
The compartments of the Royal box
Like most of the boxes, the Royal box has a “corridor” with access to storage for all of the reindeer feed, lichen, straw, buckets, odds and ends, shovel, broom, etc; the sleigh compartment for the sleigh itself, all the decorations and harness; and then of course the biggest area is for the reindeer. Our reindeer travel loose, and whenever we check on them (if we stop for fuel, for example) they’re usually lying down catching some shut-eye! It’s reassuring for us that they seem to like the box, and virtually load themselves, always happy to walk up the ramp.
Sleepy reindeer as seen from above!Origami and Morven having a restful journey, I sometimes wish I could join them back there!
The boxes are bedded thickly with straw, poo-picked after each journey (let’s just say we’ve discovered another use for the “diesel gloves” you can pick up at garages…) and completely mucked out & pressure washed each time we return home. Keeps us and the reindeer smelling fresher and helps prevent that embarrassing moment when you emerge from the box with “something” stuck to your shoe!
The less glamorous side of the job – poo picking!
Getting kit in and out of the corridor can be fairly entertaining, and over the years the pastime of “lorry yoga” has evolved, providing gentle muscle stretches for the herder on tour as you manoeuvre and contort into weird positions to get (sometimes heavy or awkward) things in and out. The straw bales are the worst, as they frequently try to take you with them as you eject them from the shelf! Getting them back in is even harder, especially when they weigh half as much as you do…
Just a bit of morning lorry yoga to warm up the muscles…… and reach!
Driving the trucks is something I half dread and half look forward to each year. As I’m not old enough to drive them on “grandfather rights”, I did a training course a few years ago and passed the dreaded test to get my license. The problem is we go for over 10 months of the year without driving anything so big, so there’s always a bit of apprehension when the trucks are picked up for the season and you first get behind the wheel… It’s funny though, as everything is bigger, the mirrors are bigger, and they just feel totally different to a car, and your brain automatically seems to click into “slow careful truck-driving” mode. Everything has to be done slower as the trucks are so big, and it’s essential to give the reindeer a smooth ride, so it instantly stops you hurrying and gives you a new sense of patience. Our top speed, even on a motorway, is restricted to 56mph, but it’s quite delightful to pop on cruise control and just potter along to your destination.
Onward!
There are a several things I didn’t know about before starting to drive the trucks. Firstly, the ruts on motorways, created by the endless trucks using the slow lane – whilst I never tend to notice them in a car as the wheels are closer together, when you’re in a truck you can get “sucked in” which is rather disconcerting. Secondly, the frustration of being limited to 56mph when trying to overtake on a motorway. All trucks theoretically have the same limit, but speedos can have a bit of variation, meaning that you’ll sometimes get stuck trying to overtake a bigger truck that’s going just fractionally slower than you. When going uphill, their extra weight slows them down and we gain on them, but once we reach the top of the hill and start heading down again, their weight speeds them up and off they shoot again! This may explain why you sometimes see trucks “duelling” for miles along a motorway… The other time your limiter is frustrating is when you come up behind a car doing 50mph on the motorway, you pull out to overtake, at which point they instantly speed up, just enough to pull ahead, so you tuck in behind them again, at which point they slow back down again!
That’s what the gap’s for! Max the cat using our truck as a surveillance point
Most of the time though it’s great fun driving a truck, and I still love arriving at an event, the organiser pointing out a tricky bit of manoeuvring that you’ll need to pull off (archways being a major culprit, sometimes with mirrors folded in and a couple of inches to spare each side) and looking hugely impressed when a girl manages to pull it off!
Whilst our reindeer spend the vast majority of the year leading a very relaxed life out on the Cairngorm mountains, for the six weeks running up to Christmas, some of our full-grown adult males and six-month-old calves take it in turns to join in Christmas events across the country. These events serve several purposes: spreading the word and educating people about the reindeer, raising vital funds to sustain the herd through the coming year, and of course spreading some festive cheer, especially to those who are unable to make it up to see the herd at home.
Sleighs and sign boards waiting to be varnished, whilst some of the “farm boys” observe from their part of the barnBoxes of sleigh decorations, useful kit for the trucks, spare everything…
Of course taking up to eight teams of six reindeer away on tour requires just a bit of preparation. Or rather, a lot of preparation. Poor Fiona deals with all of the paperwork and logistics, starting in January (it’s always Christmas for her!), whilst Tilly is the queen of organising the rest of us into helping her sort out the physical kit required. In October, most of the team end up spending a day or two at the farm, helping to scrub, sort, varnish, count and clean the various bowls, head collars, harness, ropes, boxes and sleighs, and to mix numerous bags of feed.
Digging out the smart event head collars and ropes from storageGiving the sleighs a fresh coat of varnishImogen got the short straw of pressure-washing all of the feed and water bowls
Our specially designed “boxes” which the reindeer travel in, similar to a large horse box but with additional room for a sleigh, also have to be taken out of storage and painted, cleaned and bedded down ready for the first trip of the year.
Newsletters. The very word strikes alarm into the heart of a reindeer herder. Twice a year, our very outdoorsy, active job becomes a little more office bound for a few days, as we frantically scrabble to prepare, write, and compile about 3000 words into a comprehensible piece of A3, and then mail it out to our supporters of the herd, each of whom ‘adopts’ one of our reindeer. Or more than one, and in the case of one particular adopter (you know who you are…) – six!
We send out the newsletter twice a year, in late June and late October. The June one isn’t usually as fraught as the October one, which coincides with a hectic time of year for us: calf halter training, reindeer sleigh training, the run up to the Christmas tour and the October half term. Over time they have evolved from a single, black and white sheet to a glossy, double-sided and full colour affair. We always include info about each adopter’s particular reindeer in June, but over the years as the support scheme grew, this became too much for us to cope with in October and now we send a photo of the herd instead, with a little info on the back.
Some of our more recent newsletters
There’s no fancy computerised system for us though, we instead trawl through the filed adoption slips for each year of adopters, bit by bit double-checking the info on the form and the printed label is correct, and combining a newsletter with the correct photo or info slip – and then lots of envelope stuffing ensues! When I started working here, years ago, newsletter time seemed to go on for weeks, but now it is a matter of days, usually driven by panic by the amount of other work building up that is on hold. Newsletters come first for a few days! There always seems to be one envelope that floats around the office for a few extra days, with a scribbled post-it on it saying something like ‘can’t find form in folders!’, or ‘why isn’t this on the database!!!!’.
A clear kitchen table and massive amounts of water are needed as preparationEven Tiree is roped in to help spot the right address labelsAll of these folders are full of adoption forms… and all of them must be manually checked
While we do our best to save paper and only send one newsletter to each person who adopts more than one reindeer, there’s no way for adoptions to be easily linked together, so it relies purely on the memory of person working their way through the filed forms, one by one. Many of us recognise most adopters’ names straight away, and the office talk will involve lots of ‘hang on, I think these guys adopt someone else too. Where’s their other form?!’. Often punctuated with ‘bugger, I forgot they adopted so-and-so too. It’s been posted already…’. So if you receive two separate newsletters in the post, bear with us, one day we’ll get it right! (and on that note – if you spot anything wrong with your address, do drop us an email so we can correct it!)
And then, finally, comes the mission of franking all 1000 plus envelopes. A mind numbing job, but quite soothing as the machine beeps away – known to us as ‘the franking song’. The beeping ditty is stuck in the head of the unfortunate herder tasked with this job for the rest of the day.
The hardest week of the year for the franking machineAt last – envelopes stuffed, labelled, checked, franked, boxed and ready to wing their way across the country!
So hopefully by now (or within the next few days at least), you adopters out there should have your shiny new Oct 2015 newsletter in your hands. And if don’t adopt a reindeer, and want to get your paws on one of these hallowed pieces of literature (ha!), then there’s only one way to do so. Now, where’s that adoption form got to???
If you’ve visited us in the last couple of years and met Boris up in the hill enclosure, there’s every possibility that he was the reindeer that left the strongest impression on you. However, he’s not, shall we say, our finest specimen in the herd. He’s not particularly big, nor does he grow the most impressive antlers, but he is, without even a shadow of doubt, the ugliest reindeer in the entire Cairngorm herd (if you’ve not met him, have a good long look at the photos before you say ‘awww, poor thing’…).
Boris and his nose through the years
Boris was born in 2012, but way out on the mountain free-range rather than in our hill enclosure. We therefore only saw him once in his first summer, and at that stage nobody noticed something rather strange about his face. It was only when he and his mum Foil came into our hill enclosure in the autumn that we realised something was amiss. At first glance it looks like his eyes are wonky, but in reality both are the same distance below his antlers, and it is only below eye level that his nose takes a dive to the right with alarming squint-ness! As Boris has got older and his skull has continued to grow, the nose has become more and more wonky, but it never appears to cause him any problems, and is instead garnering him quite a fan club. Tilly once saw him having a wee sip from a puddle in a neighbouring field that no other reindeer could reach underneath the fence, so perhaps it has its advantages! Somebody who volunteered here a couple of years back once told me they had seen a similar condition in a red deer before, caused by the nasal passages developing in the womb at different rates. I have no idea if this is indeed the case, but anyone reading this has any knowledge on the subject, we’d be delighted to hear from you. We have seen it before, in a lovely male reindeer named Addjá who joined our herd from Sweden in 2004, but his face is barely squint at all in comparison to Boris; he could almost be called handsome! Although I’ve just looked through his photo archive to choose a picture of him – and on second thoughts, perhaps not.
Our lovely Swedish boy Addjá, with his slightly squint nose
When we take our harness trained reindeer on tour at Christmas time they are trained to pull a sleigh side by side, and as Addjá’s nose bends in the opposite direction to Boris’s, this has led to a bit of a debate here. Should Boris go on the left and Addjá on the right so their noses point into the centre (more stream-lined?) or should it be the other way around? As Addjá is an old boy now and Boris isn’t yet trained to harness, this may be a question we never get to figure out the answer to.
