old – The Cairngorm Reindeer Herd

14th July 202314th July 2023

Golden Oldies

A common question that we get asked on our Hill Trips is ‘how long do reindeer live for?’. The answer is usually anything between 11 – 15 years old with the females typically living a little longer than the males. The oldest reindeer we’ve ever had in our herd was a female called Lilac living to a grand old age of 19, while our oldest male Elvis is still currently living at 17 years old. The older generation in our herd have a pretty good life, the females spend almost the whole year free ranging on open mountain where they know all the best spots for grazing and where they can find the most peace. The older males do free-range on the hills for 3 – 4 months a year and then spend their days at our hill farm near Glenlivet, even with access to the hill they typically spend there time eating and sleeping but that’s totally fine by us. For me, some of the biggest characters in the herd are the older reindeer and even though I’ve only known them since 2017, I thought it would be nice to tell you a bit about some of my favourite females who are on the mature side of life.

Fly – At 16 years old, Fly is the joint 4th oldest reindeer in our herd along with Fern. For years now she has come across as the natural leader and matriarch of the herd and will regularly be found leading the reindeer to a call or to the areas of best grazing. She’s always grown a cracking set of antlers too which have sometimes been the largest female set of the year and usually starts to grow her new set of antlers before any other female. Other herders have told me that Fly was quite an aloof reindeer when she was younger and even to this day she isn’t exactly tame, but she has maybe learned to trust us a bit more in recent years and will happily take handfeed from us now. Being such a big reindeer she’s unmistakable once you get to know them all as individuals and it’s always nice to see her doing so well at her age. These days she keeps herself on the outside of the bigger groups of reindeer not getting involved in the hustling and pushing of other aspiring females, but I feel like her presence is never missed. For her age Fly is in amazing condition and I hope that she can remain a key member of the herd for some time still.

Fern – Fern was one of the first reindeer I ever got to know, and she’s got such a sweet and friendly character. Also 16 years old, she is once again looking amazing for her age and growing another great set of antlers. I sometimes think that reindeer can give a sense of calmness to people in the way they are so relaxed and docile, and no reindeer acts more like this than Fern. I do feel like I abuse her easy-going nature sometimes, whenever I’m in need of catching out a reindeer to help lead the herd or pair a reindeer up with one that needs to come off the hill, I can always rely on Fern to easily put a halter on and help out in such situations, she never seems to mind ands always does a wonderful job. A couple of years ago Fern also did something I’ve never seen another reindeer do and that was to take on another calf while also raising her own, Kiruna had lost his mother on the free-range, he was adopted by Fern along with her calf Dublin and for some time we didn’t even know which young reindeer was her calf because she treated them both equally. All in all, she’s just a wonderful reindeer.

Both Fly and Fern together – April 2023. The food crumbs on Fly’s nose are a bit of a giveaway!

Okapi – Okapi turned 15 in May but in my mind I’ve always thought of her as one of the oldies, I sound so mean to write this but she’s always had older looking face compared to any other reindeer her age. She couldn’t be a more friendly reindeer and has very gentle personality. Very unfortunately when Okapi was 5 years old she prolapsed on several occasions and as a result was no longer able to calve. This meant that since then, she has spent a long life of predominantly free-ranging on the open mountains. It’s always great to come across her on the free-range as she usually heads straight toward us once she realises we have food. She’s quite a greedy reindeer but she doesn’t push it like some of the others in our herd. I like to give her little extra handfuls of food most times I see her because she’s always just so nice and I know she’s a reindeer most herders admire too. It’s also worth mentioning that Okapi’s older brother is Elvis, there must be something in the genes for Okapi and Elvis to be living for as long as they have.

A more typical picture of Okapi – February 2023.

Ryvita – Everyone loves Ryvita! At 14 years old, she’s been a favourite among reindeer herders for many a year now and is the perfect balance of being friendly, cheeky and confident. She will always come over to say hello, or more likely see if there is any food, and will happily follow you around for as long as it takes until you give in and offer her a little hand feed. Over the years, Ryvita has been one of the most photographed reindeer in our herd. Like Fly she grows her antlers early and always knows how to strike a pose for the camera. She’s also quite distinctive for her having a very wide belly and I’ve regularly been asked if she’s pregnant, my usual reply is ‘no, that’s just Ryvita’. Ryvita is part of a large family group and all the reindeer from that line and very friendly and sweet.

Ryvita – May 2023. Growing lovely antlers already.

Joe

9th September 202227th August 2022

Past and Present Photo Blog

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.

Free ranging reindeer below the Northern Corries (1956).

Reindeer house has changed quite a bit – I don’t think anyone who lived there back in the 60’s ever imagined there’d be an electric charging point for their car! (1961)

As important now as it was back in 1960, if you ever see a sign like this, please, pay attention to what it says.

The view across to Meall a’ Bhuachaille from the enclosure. The angles aren’t quite the same here, but the density of the forest down towards Glenmore has changed a lot since the first photo was taken in 1960 (a topic so interesting it’s almost worthy of its own blog!).

Looking out towards Ryvoan pass. The 1960 photo shows mostly cows, whilst our modern photo shows a mixture of bulls (Sherlock!) with cows and calves this spring.

One of the most beautiful backdrops you can see the reindeer against – the Northern Corries of the Cairngorm plateau (1960).

Whilst the angle is slightly different on these ones, you can still see the most obvious change – the funicular railway and ski runs on Cairngorm. The cows and calves in the foreground are near Black Lochan, within our hillside enclosure. The area around silver mount was the initial beginnings of what would become our hill enclosure, being fenced in 1954 (this photo was taken in 1960). Since then, it has expanded significantly, but you can still see that the same boundaries are followed by our fences even now.

Michael Kilby and Vincent Utsi are replicated by herders Lotti (small) and Amy (tall). This is now the entrance to our shop – a door I’m sure many of you will recognise!

As mentioned earlier, the density of trees around Glenmore has changed massively since the sixties. The modern photo, taken from within our paddocks serves to illustrate this point pretty well!

Beware the bull! This sign sits at one of the lesser used entrances to the hill enclosure, with only a subtle makeover between the 1956 sign and our current day one.

Harry

17th July 20208th July 2020

Pedicures for reindeer

Hooves are important – got to keep them clean!

A common question we’re asked, usually after spending some time with the reindeer and noticing their beautiful big feet, is whether we need to trim their hooves. Reindeer are endowed with large feet with four toes to each hoof: two main weight bearing toes which do most of the work, plus two smaller and higher up toes which only touch the ground when on soft surfaces (snow or bog), when they spread out like a large snow shoe and mean reindeer can traverse snow drifts a lot easier than humans.

Okapi showing off how well her hooves serve her on snow.

Reindeer find snow way easier than us humans.

In general our answer is no, we don’t have to routinely trim the hooves of our reindeer. Just like our own nails, the hard outer hoof continues growing constantly throughout their lives, but as they are roaming fair distances each day over rough, rocky and stony mountainous ground, the amount of wear tends to balance this out and means their toes stay nice and neat. Of course there is no one out trimming the hooves of wild caribou and other deer, who get through their entire lives with perfectly shaped hooves, and as our herd are in the correct habitat with plenty of movement, they are usually fine without intervention.

Wapiti grazing on short vegetation with gravel and rocks beneath it.

Spending much of their time on hard ground like this wears hooves down correctly.

However, there is always the exception to the rule. There are perhaps three reasons why we sometimes do need to dust off the hoof trimmers. First up is that we’re found our pure white reindeer (step forward Blondie and Matto in particular) have hooves that, for whatever reason, seem to grow faster than those of their darker coloured compatriots. Once or twice a year we’ll decide they are a little lengthy and have a trim to keep everything in place. Over-long hooves can cause all kinds of problems, especially putting pressure on their joints as their foot cannot sit correctly, so everything becomes misaligned. There’s an old saying “No foot, no horse”, and it applies equally to reindeer – without happy feet they can’t lead a happy life.

On white hooves you can see through to the bony structure of the foot beneath, and the hoof appears pink as you can see through to where the blood vessels are.

Matto joined our herd from Sweden, but despite not getting handled until he was a bit older he is an absolute star when we need to trim his feet. He’s busy moulting in this photo so looks a bit scruffy!

Blondie barely needs a halter while her feet are trimmed as long as there’s a bag of feed. Olympic can’t believe that she is getting breakfast before him – the weariness has left him without strength to even hold up his head…

The second reason is if a reindeer has an injury or abnormality meaning a toe or whole hoof doesn’t receive the same amount of wear. Jute has one hoof which tends to grow a bit differently to normal, curving inwards instead of straight, which then prevents the edge wearing down in the usual manner. It’s no problem at all to him as long as we keep an eye on it and trim it as needed, but if we didn’t it could cause him difficulty walking as it grew.

And the third reason, embarrassingly, is pure laziness. This is where I’m going to point the finger squarely at some of our middle-aged males, the ones who can’t always be bothered to head off and graze as a real reindeer should, but who would much rather just lie waiting at the gate for their next meal to be served (Hamish, I’m looking at you). The straightforward reason that their hooves are too long is that they haven’t done anywhere near enough exercise to wear them down in balance with the rate that they’re growing. Perhaps we need to start a fitness club?! Funnily enough, there’s not a single female reindeer who falls into this category…

Hamish’s feet in his younger days (aged 4) when they were neat and pristine. Alas, in the last year or two laziness has caught up with him and they have a tendency to grow a little longer than this now…

Thankfully, trimming the hooves of our reindeer is stress free. Every single reindeer in our herd is halter-trained as a calf and is well used to being around humans. That means that if we spot their hooves need some TLC we simply catch them, pop a headcollar on, and whilst one herder occupies them with a bucket of tasty treats, another herder gets to work with a pair of snips to cut back the hard outer hoof. There is no feeling in this section of the foot so no discomfort is caused, and despite the fact that we never work at teaching reindeer to have their feet lifted like you would with a horse, they very quickly cotton on to the fact that nothing bad is happening and just let you get on with it. We never need to use tranquillisers in order to trim hooves, or hold the reindeer in place by force.

Hamish (mid-moult) contenting himself with a snack in the trough while I deal with his hooves. You may note that the lead rope has been abandoned entirely in order for the photograph to be taken!

Perfecting the crouch – balance their knee – trim action

My personal favourite technique is to crouch by a front leg, rest their knee on my knee, which leaves me two hands free to trim their hoof! Sometimes two hands are needed to cut through the tough hoof, especially on the old boys (hey, Elvis!) who have real “old man toenails”!

We’re pretty proud of how good our reindeer are at standing to have their hooves trimmed.

Andi