September is a beautiful time of year. We’ve had the first snow on the plateau and lovely autumnal sunny days. The odd soggy day too, of course! The reindeer look fantastic with fully grown antlers and fresh winter coats growing through.
We’ve been doing lots of free range missions to bring in the cows and their calves which is always fun. The bulls and cows have been stripping the velvet and getting a wee bit more feisty and hormonal in preparation for the upcoming rut. We split the first bull, Choc-ice, with a small group of girls on the 22nd – exciting times!
The calves have also been given a name but as always we don’t post any names online until our adopters have their newsletters. Maybe by next month’s photo blog!
1st of September: Cheer and her daughter Chai in the background. 1st of September: The time of year when the bulls start stripping the velvet. Here is two-year-old Limpopo looking very handsome. 3rd of September: Emmental and her calf back in the enclosure after a summer of free ranging. 3rd of September: A family portrait! Irish, his wee sister, and his mum, Helsinki. Since Helsinki has been back in our enclosure, one-year-old Irish has become rather attached to his mum again! Helsinki is very tolerant and shares her pile of food with her teenage son. 4th of September: Bordeaux and her son. These two didn’t come in for their breakfast so I got a lovely walk up Silver Mount to find them and return them to the herd. Both were completely fine and clearly just having a lie-in. 4th of September: Elbe, a twin, is looking phenomenal! He’s two years old and has a really lovely nature! We’re all very fond of him. 4th of September: Peanut’s male calf is looking great and is already quite tame. 4th of September: Two freckly white noses trying to get into the hand feed bag. Sundae on the left and Beanie on the right. 9th of September: The calves in the enclosure have quickly learnt what’s in the bags! They get allowed to feed directly from the bags which encourages them to be tamer and so they can get some extra mouthfuls without a bigger reindeer stealing it from them. Zoom and Choc-ice are circling the bags like piranhas! 10th of September: One of our gorgeous calves. This wee one belongs to Hopscotch. 10th of September: Glacée and her daughter. She’s done so well as a first time mum!11th of September: Lotti and Kate feeding the herd. 11th of September: Moving some of our free rangers from outside the cafe on Cairngorm Mountain! Sunflower, Fika and Solero are the three closest to camera. Fika and Solero are stripping the velvet from their antlers. 15th of September: Old girl Ryvita on a very soggy day. She’s now back out free ranging but came into the enclosure for a few days for a health check and vaccination. She’s looking great for 16!16th of September: Brie posing beautifully on a lovely autumnal morning. 16th of September: The calves are allowed to feed from the bags before we put it out on the ground for everyone else. You can see the older reindeer lurking around the edge and Cameron and Kate on guard duty!17th of September: Amazon is now two years old. Her mum Dante is just behind. 17th of September: Christie has done it again! She looks phenomenal and has produced yet another lovely, chilled-out wee dude!18th of September: Jimmy looking very handsome.22nd of September: Winnie looking gorgeous in the beautiful autumnal light! She was hand reared in 2023 and has come back into the hill enclosure after almost a year out free ranging looking amazing!23rd of September: Morven and her calf. Both have ridiculous antlers!24th of September: Marple and calf. Her calf has turned into a greedy food monster!26th of September: After a week in our Paddocks Dr Seuss is now back in the hill enclosure ready for the 11am Hill Trip and hand feeding!
August has been a busy and fun month. We’ve had lots of visitors and three sold out Hill Trips almost everyday. Lots of people have also been coming into the Paddocks to see the reindeer on display there, and very excitingly the Exhibition is nearly ready. It’s looking super! You’ll definitely hear to social media and our website when we’re open.
We’ve also been having lots of free range action which every herder loves! Generally we start to see the free ranging females more as they come down in altitude as the weather gets cooler and the mushrooms appear on the side of the hills. We start bringing in the mums and their calves back into the enclosure any time in August. They spend June through to August/early September out roaming the hills learning how to be little wild reindeer and enjoying all the best grazing, but when the autumn rolls around it’s time for them to learn what a feed bag is and in time, how to walk on a halter etc. The following photos are a small snapshot of what’s been occurring this month…
1st of August: Limpopo looking super! Lovely tall antlers and in his dark summer coat.2nd of August: The morning of the storm! Sadly in the afternoon we had to cancel our Hill Trips as the wind was so strong. 3rd of August: Scoop and Elbe are full brothers. Their mum is Suebi and their dad is Morse. They’re both very handsome!5th of August: Yukon looking as cheeky as ever! He’s such a lovely lad.6th of August: Found Marple and calf on the free range. Fiona and I brought them back into the hill enclosure. The first calf born back in April and the first calf back in the enclosure after the summer out free ranging.8th of August: Kernel looking very handsome, coming in for a close up!9th of August: All of my human colleagues abandoned me in the office for an afternoon on various free range missions! Ginger snuck in to keep me company!9th of August: Marple’s calf already very comfortable in the enclosure. 12th of August: Lovely boys waiting for food! From L to R we have Kulfi, Rocket, Limpopo and Adzuki.12th of August: Cicero posing beautifully!13th of August: Bordeaux’s wee male calf hanging out with the big boys!14th of August: Choc-ice wandering down the food line looking for the best pile of food. 15th of August: Zap found the perfect tussock to rest his chin on.18th of August: Butter posing beautifully. As a 5 year old bull he’s grown nice big antlers this summer. 20th of August: Macchiato wandering over for food. He is Marple’s (see above) calf from 2024.25th of August: Turtle and calf are back in the hill enclosure after the summer out free ranging.25th of August: Three-year-olds, Zoom and Iskrem standing together. I thought this was a nice photo until I noticed Iskrem hadn’t changed his position after taking a pee!26th of August: Trilby and calf are back in the enclosure.27th of August: Merida brought herself back into the enclosure, she’s looking fantastic, especially for 13 years old. 28th of August: Sundae and calf looking great!28th of August: I wanted to try to take some photos of the gorgeous calves, but Zoom had other ideas, everywhere I turned, there he was!
At this time of year the entire herd is free ranging over two sites. Here on Cairngorm we have most of our adult females and calves and we keep an eye on them usually every second day. In the winter we also lease more winter grazing at our second site where all the adult males are, plus a few cows and some of our bigger male calves with their mums. Tilly monitors the goings on there every couple of days, but we go and give her a helping hand whenever she needs. It’s always a joy to catch up with the reindeer there, especially when the weather is this good! Andi went over to help check all the temperatures last weekend and she took some photos which I thought I’d stick in a blog! Otherwise our social media is mostly made up of the cows at this time of year… so here’s a good mix of the reindeer Tilly has this winter!
Jelly looking great and enjoying a peacful winter!Frost will be 7 years old in the spring! He’s a very reliable ‘Christmas reindeer’ and was out and about at events on weekends throughout November and December. He’s now having a well-earned rest and enjoying free roaming in the hills.Kernel was a breeding bull during last year’s rut where we would certainly not want to be this close to him! But now his testosterone levels have dropped he’s back to his usual freindly self. Phew!Magnum with the white patchy face had his first Christmas season as an adult last year – he’s also now enoying a well-deserved break. Limpopo next to him is one of the darkest reindeer in the herd and is a yearling bull.Mr Whippy standing out like a sore thumb when there’s no snow!Adzuki with his head down grazing and Christie looking into the camera, beautiful as ever. Turtle and her nephew Elbe enjoying the easy grazing.The size of Sherlock’s new antlers are ridiculous already! Usually the males don’t grow antlers until closer to the spring but Sherlock is in such good condition he started growing them in December!What a beautiful day to be out in the hills! Haricot closest to the camera!2 year old Iskrem having recently cast is antlers. Closest to the camera is Earl Grey. He’s one of three male calves at our second site along with their mums. They’re the 3 biggest calves of the year and are already starting to think they’re big bulls!
I thought I’d write a wee blog to thank everyone who has come to volunteer for us this year. However, if you’ve volunteered in a previous year, please don’t be remotely offended if you’ve not found your name in a blog like this – it’s literally only because I have a few spare minutes and Ruth (blog master) is sitting next to me… so probably time I wrote a blog once again. Gotta keep her sweet…
Volunteering this year has had a slightly different feel to it, as the Paddocks normally take up a considerable amount of a volunteer’s time each day; poo-picking, sweeping, opening and closing them each day, chatting to visitors out there… But this year that aspect has vanished completely, so volunteers have been able to be a bit more ‘relaxed’ during their week, sometimes not starting until gone 10am. Unheard of in the past! Although sadly this luxury was not afforded to us full-time herders… Volunteers this year have therefore spent the majority of their time helping us on the Hill Trips, usually twice a day, with rather less time spent pottering about down at the Centre.
Caitlin joined us for a week in August. Here she is with Hemp and Limpopo in the hill enclosure.
Normally we take volunteers each year from May to October, but long-term regular volunteer Emm is afforded special status, often coming outwith these months. She managed three stints this year, and you’ll find many blogs over the years from her on our website, the most recent (at time of writing) being here. We love having Emm here to volunteer!
Emm with her adopted reindeer Mo, braving the weather at a very cold and wet local Christmas event a few years back.Emm in September this year with Cowboy and Mivvi.
I’ve just peered at the wall calendar here in the office and counted 26 other volunteers who gave up a week of their time to come and help us this year – as ever from all walks of life and ranging in age from 18 to late 60s (I’m guessing – apologies if I’ve offended and congratulations if I’ve flattered!). We love this range of people from all walks of life – it’s much more interesting for us to have a stream of totally different people here every week than it would be to get people all of like mind.
Of those 26 people 12 were returnees, which I guess means we must be doing something right! There’s an element of apprehension for us on a Monday morning when a ‘new’ volunteer is due to arrive, not knowing what to expect of someone – the scant info we gather in the application form only goes so far to give us an idea of what someone will be like. This year everyone, new or returnee, has been absolutely wonderful though, so we never needed to worry.
Stephanie returned for a week in June of this year, the third year on the trot! Stephanie is pictured doing a very important volunteer job – offering the slightly leaner youngsters some extra food at the end of a Hill Trip. Yukon is delighted!
So huge thanks must go to all 26 lovely volunteers, in order only of when they visited: Victoria, Jayne (who wrote a lovely blog you can read here – thanks Jayne!), Anne, Kerry, Rachel C, Marcus, Stephanie, Anna, Wendy, Aleksandra, Becca, Rachel S, Jocelyn, Nora, Caitlin, Katie, Callum, Helen, Christine, Karen, Sharon, Colin, Sophie, Lisa, Emily and Brenda. You are all amazing! A special shout-out to Nora, who at 18 was our youngest volunteer but also the furthest travelled – having persuaded family to come on holiday to Scotland from Washington D.C. in the States, so she could spend a week of that time with us!
Rachel S joined us in July for a second time. This is herder Kate with Dr Seuss and Ärta (left) and Rachel with Ob and Iskrem (right) helping out with harness training.One of the main responsibilities of a volunteer is helping out on Hill Trips, carrying food, helping dish out the hand feed, and talking to our visitors. This is Alex who helped out in July for a week doing a sterling job of not letting Jelly in to the white bag!
Another person to mention is 14 year old Maisie, who lives locally and is the daughter of family friends of the Smiths. This year Maisie has been joining us on some days in the school holidays and has been wonderful, super chatty and sociable for such a young lass, and always keen to get involved and help out. She’s also very fit, being into lots of outdoor sports, so puts me to shame anytime I’m on the hill with her!
Borlotti saying hello to the lovely Maisie!
And the final person to mention who’s a constant help throughout the year is Carol. Carol started out as an adopter, living relatively locally, and has progressed to being a regular volunteer, helping on the Hill Trips most weekends. She has finely honed her hand-feeding talk over the years and now has the groups listening with bated breath!
For anyone reading this that is thinking that a week’s reindeer herding sounds like a fit for them, why not come and join us?! We start booking in each season’s volunteers each January, so drop us an email then if you’re interested and we’ll send you an application form. We can’t provide accommodation unfortunately, but there is both a campsite and a youth hostel within a couple of hundred metres, not to mention a huge amount of other accommodation elsewhere in the area.
But finally, I will finish on a sad note. Our wonderful long term volunteer Paul, who visited for a fortnight twice a year for around 25 years, initially with wife Pat – sadly passed away in his mid-eighties this summer. Paul was a retired joiner and so built all sorts of things here over the years, mixed all the feed for the reindeer and generally made everything wobbly and creaky into something strong and stable. He could talk the hind legs off a donkey, keeping us constantly entertained with his stories, and did his best to get us all drunk in the evening at least once during each stay! We will miss him hugely.
We reopened to the public on the 10th of February. With no Paddocks and Exhibition available (the site is currently a very big hole) it feels rather strange! But the Hill Trips are running as usual, in fact for the February half term we brought some of our free ranging cows and nine month old calves in to our hill enclosure allowing us to do two Hill Trips a day. So, we’ve been busy looking after our the herd in the enclosure and checking in with the free rangers once every few days. February has so far been rather mild so far with not very much snow so we’ve been having a relatively easy time, and the reindeer are finding easy grazing. We’ll be back to free range visits very soon (Monday 26th Feb) so if anyone is visiting us between now and the end of April be prepared for potentially much longer walks out to find the herd.
1st of February: Andi surrounded by some of our wonderful reindeer calves.1st of February: Colorado the cutie!7th of February: Repairing a fence at the top of our hill enclosure that got ripped up by a recent storm. Cameron is stood by the hole where the strainer post in the foreground should have been!8th of February (a): Lotti and I head out to bring in the free ranging herd to our hill enclosure ready for the half term school holidays. Here’s Morven leading the way.8th of February (b): Trying my best to woo the herd across the burn. I can confirm the burn was higher than the height of my wellies.8th of February (c): Lace was the first to cross the burn with her calf Limpopo at her side. Thank you Lace for being a great leader! The herd were quick to follow her and then marched up this hill that we affectionately call Killer Hill.11th of February: Holy Moley showing off her lovely incisors!14th of February: After a day in the enclosure these reindeer are off back out free roaming. From L to R we’ve got Sorbet, Feta, Pip, Danube, Colorado (and his mum Christie just poking her head out behind) and Elbe. 15th of February: Sundae being cute as ever on a very dreich Hill Trip.16th of February: Amazon saying hello.16th of February: The state of the Paddocks just now.20th of February: A recent storm blew down (another) fence within the enclosure. Here’s the delivery of new posts ready for for work to commence.22nd of February: We did a enclosure swap. These are the girls who’ve been in the hill enclosure for a wee while now heading back out to free roam with Fiona leading the way. 22nd of February: Our wonderful volunteer Emm is back and has brought the sun with her. All the herders are delighted to see her, and so is Feta!
January has seen the last few Hill Trips of the Christmas holidays and then the start of our closed period where we can crack on with various office and maintenance jobs such as repairing holes in our waterproof kit (thanks Lotti for keeping us dry!) and oiling the Christmas harness ready to be stored for the next 10 months.
The entire reindeer herd roams freely in the hills at this time of year over two locations. Tilly looks after one group, and we look after the herd here which wander the Cairngorms. We tend to visit them every other day (when the weather allows) to check on our wonderful furry friends. Of course, they’re totally fine and are in their element over the winter months but they won’t turn down a free meal. I think it’s mostly for the herders benefit that we go up and see them else we’d all probably go a bit mad without our reindeer fix.
The HUGE thing which is also going on this January is the exhibition has been demolished so it’s been all hands on deck, taking things down, sorting and storing things to be kept, cutting trees, clearing brash, ripping up boardwalks, loading trailers etc. Here’s a selection of photos from what has turned out to be a rather action packed ‘quiet’ season! We look forward to reopening the shop and taking Hill Trips from Saturday the 10th of February.
2nd of January: A wonderful day for a Hill Trip.3rd of January: 15 year old Ibex leading the free ranging herd.5th of January: Cassie overseeing the feeding of the calves.10th of January: The herd emerging from the mist on a beautiful atmospheric day. Merida at the front.10th of January: Pavlova with one of the biggest sets of antlers this winter.11th of January: Snoozy Orinoco and mum Pinto.13th of January: Ben leading the herd in for a free lunch. Pinto and Orinoco at the front!14th of January: Lace and her son Limpopo in the snow. Lace is a strong leader, and tends to be at the front of the free ranging herd as they come to our call.14th of January: Sisters in the snow! Danube and her older sister Sorbet. Their mum Brie was just next to them too, but I missed the full family portrait.19th of January: Herd on the move! Pinto and Orinoco, Lace and Limpopo and Hopscotch lead the charge.22nd of January: We left the reindeer to it today, which meant we spent the morning clearing the chaos in the paddocks after the demolition of the exhibition. Here’s Lotti, Andi and Lisette hard at work.24th of January: Amy leading the free ranging herd. 24th of January: Colin and Cameron on the site of our old exhibition. The Arctic Shed is the only part currently still standing.
