Murray - The Cairngorm Reindeer Herd

With autumn being the season that the calves return to the hill enclosure, along with their mums, it’s always exciting to see them and to start to get to know them as characters. Having spent all summer with males only in the enclosure, it’s suddenly a bit overwhelming to have a sea of ‘new’ reindeer to get to know once again! The calves are the hardest to learn who is who.

Last time we saw them properly, in late spring, they were tiny and heading out to free-range in their calf coats, which are quite different in colouration to an adult reindeer’s coat. By autumn they’ve moulted, grown their new winter coat, and are many times bigger – i.e. they look COMPLETELY different! Other than very obvious colour variation and face markings, their wee antlers are the easiest way to tell them apart. The photo below shows Macchiato at 4 months old, looking about as generic as is possible for a reindeer calf – very average size and shape antlers, along with being very much the ‘normal’ body colour. Difficult to tell one from t’other, looking like this!

So I thought I’d show some of the antler shapes of calves over the years in this blog. The memorable ones tend to be the biggest ones, of which the outright winner – by a country mile – is Gandalf. However, he was born in Sweden, and many of the Swedish calves we’ve imported over the years (to increase our genetic diversity within the herd) have had very big antlers so maybe he should be disqualified my list…

But here’s a photo of Gandalf anyway. Compare those antlers to Macchiato’s in the photo above!

So… my winner for sheer height of antler is Jester, who definitely looked a bit out of proportion as a calf. He’s gone on to grow enormous adult antlers too, though tending towards wider rather than tall.

Some calves have really complex antlers – not quite as tall as Jester’s but more elaborate with several points on each. Examples include:

Murray, born in 2012. Look at that headgear!

Christie (antlers still in velvet here) – exceptional as she is female. As an adult she’s gone on to have very big antlers each year, a family trait inherited from mum Caddis and granny Haze.

Cream – these calf antlers always reminded me of water divining rods!

Duke gets a bonus point for having a forward-pointing tine at the base of one of his calf antlers – perfectly normal in an adult reindeer, but rare in a calf.

Whilst not the biggest calf antlers ever, Fez wins my ‘prettiest’ antlers award. Small and perfectly formed, with several points top and bottom. Beautiful!

But sometimes, it all goes wrong. Calf antlers, being thinner than adult antlers, are easily broken, especially as adult reindeer show no love whatsoever for anyone else’s offspring other than their own, and are all too willing to whack a calf on the head with a hoof should they get in their way. This results in antlers breaking, and this happens whilst the antler is still growing, they will sometimes fuse at the break and the calf is left with a flopped-over broken point.

One of this year’s calves, Lochi, with the classic ‘been-walloped-on-the-head-by-a-hoof’ look.

If this happens early enough in the season, the antler will, once the break is fused and healed, start to grow upright once again from the break. Here’s Fava below, who had managed to break his right hand antler not once but twice, resulting in two downward pointing bits. His antler shows a centimetre of new, upward growth from the break – and then he ran out of time to grow any more!

Antlers broken right at the base can cause a problem with obscuring vision, poor Hopscotch here had to have this disaster (above) sawn off once it had lost all feeling in the autumn, so she could see where she was going!

And sometimes, it all just goes terribly, terribly wrong…

Poor Heinz! Two broken antlers, bound in place to keep them as still as possible, waiting for the vet to arrive.

Holy Moley’s broken antler resulted in a shaved head after the vet had to remove the broken bit right at the base to prevent further damage. Some of you might remember watching her story on our Channel 4 documentary in 2020!

Hen

I’m lacking in inspiration, motivation and time to think of a new and so-far unused blog topic, so this week I’m going for the old tried-and-tested method – pick a reindeer and write about him/her.

This week’s subject is Okapi. I’ve known Okapi her entire life, and at 15 and a half years old, it’s a long life indeed. Whilst not right up there in my very, very top favourite reindeer, she’s always been in the upper echelons of the reindeer herd, and I reckon most other herders would agree – collectively amongst us, she’s held in extremely high affection.

Okapi was born in 2008, her mum Esme’s third calf. Esme was a lovely reindeer, and was actually the subject of our very first blog, back in 2015! I first met Okapi at a few months old, at which point she was easily distinguishable from the other 2008 calves by the silver hairs on her face, giving her the appearance of wearing war-paint.

Those silver hairs eventually spread across the rest of Okapi’s body, and although she is still want we would call ‘normal-coloured’, she’s a much greyer colour than many of the other reindeer in the same colour category. Coat colour runs in family lines – Esme was on the silvery side too, as were many other members of the family, most notably Okapi’s big brother Elvis. Elvis became a legendary reindeer in our herd, living to 17 and only passing away a few months ago.

Okapi has always been a ‘leader’ in the herd, a relatively dominant female and generally one of the first to start moving in the right direction when we call the herd from a distance, leading them towards us. Reindeer like this are worth their weight in gold to us as a lot of the winter season is spent bellowing towards specks on a distant hill, and wondering whether they are going to come to us or we are going to have to go to them… It needs a dominant reindeer to sigh, stand up and start moving to get the rest of the herd underway too.

As a youngster, out free-ranging up on the mountains.

We usually like to breed from our loveliest female reindeer multiple times, but Okapi had a bit of a hitch in this respect. She had two lovely calves, in 2012 and 2013, Murray and Oka. Murray had the best set of antlers that we’ve seen on a calf in our herd, and we were very excited for what he would grow into in the future. Sadly it wasn’t to be, and he passed away at about a year old. Win some and lose some with animals, but this felt like a particularly hard loss.

Okapi with 8 month old Murray – look at those calf antlers!

Okapi’s second calf, Oka, was also lovely, but again didn’t survive long term – dying at about 2 years old. A huge shame, as a female she should have gone on to continue Okapi’s genetic line, but hey ho. Again these things happen, but it feels unfair for Okapi to have lost both her calves.

And that was that for Okapi’s motherhood career, as a few months after Oka’s birth she suffered a prolapse. This came completely out of the blue and we never knew what – if anything – triggered it, but the end result was that everything had to be pushed back into place more than once, and eventually permanent stitches were inserted by the vet to keep poor old Okapi’s bits where they should be. This meant no more calves for her – a real shame for a lovely 5 year old female in her prime.

Okapi’s classic pose – she’s a reindeer who almost always has her ears pricked. This is how I will remember her when she’s no longer with us.

But life as a permanently ‘single lady’ has meant Okapi has since been a lady of leisure, all her energy going into her own body each year, and quite possibly has contributed to her longevity. Almost every year she’s grown pretty big antlers, and it’s only really in the last couple of years she’s started to look ‘old’.

Never having calves at foot means that Okapi also spends a higher ratio of her time free-ranging out on the mountains, as there’s never really a reason for her to spend any length of time in our hill enclosure. She will come in now and then for a few days as all our reindeer need vaccinating a couple of times of year, or sometimes we’ll hold particularly friendly reindeer back in the enclosure so they can be part of a the group for filming, for example. But on average, I’d say Okapi spends 11.5 months a year out living a completely free lifestyle – pretty nice!

And finally, Okapi had one particular starring role – on the cover of our Naked Reindeer Herders charity calendar in 2023. But I don’t think too many people were looking at the reindeer, if I’m honest…

Okapi on the right,with Ochil, Ruth, Fiona, Marple and Lotti, left to right. What a line up!

Hen

Tag: Murray

Wee calfie antlers!

Old lady Okapi