April has flown by. The first half of the month busy with the Easter holidays. We’ve had some wonderful Hill Trips both out on the free range and also in our hill enclosure here on Cairngorm. Although not much spring weather it has to be said.
The second half of the month was busy with moving reindeer around getting them in the right places for the fast-approaching calving season. Most pregnant females have been brought into our hill enclosure now and the “single ladies” (the old girls, young girls, or ones having a year off motherhood) were put back out to free range. We’ve also brought the first males back into the enclosure after their winter free ranging at our second site. Lovely to see some of the boys back.
The office has also been busy as always – my jobs have included newsletter preparation, working on adoption packs, preparing the 2025 reindeer calendar (wahoo – it’s just gone to print), trying to up our social media game, sorting emails, drinking tea…
It’s been a fun month watching antlers casting and growing, and bellies widen on our pregnant females. Bring on the first calf of 2024!
2nd of April: Moving the herd with Lisette at the back doing a wonderful job as ‘sheep dog’!3rd of April: Danube with her tongue out!5th of April: Juniper and Sundae in a blizzard!6th of April: Fern and Okapi soon to be 17 and 16 years old respectively are the first over at the feed bag!8th of April: Sunshine!! A rare sight this month. Moving the herd into position for our Hill Trip.15th of April: Dr Seuss is back in the enclosure after a winter free ranging in the hills. He’s clearly feeling snoozy after the Hill Trip. He takes his role as chief hand-feeder incredibly seriously!17th of April: Sunny (our hand-reared calf from 2022) was back in the hill enclosure for a short while and followed me back to the gate just like he used to as a young calf!16th of April: These 11-month-old calves get to feed out of the bag for another month before they turn into “yearlings”. Orinoco is the cutie closest to camera. 18th of April: Mushy, Spy, Dante, Ladybird, Sambar and Sunny.22nd of April: Sherlock looking handsome with those big velvet antlers.23rd of April: A lovely morning with Tilly on the hill. 24th of April: I headed over to the farm to help Tilly with a farm tour. Lovely to see some of the boys I haven’t seen much of this winter, like Druid here!24th of April: The lovely Hemp!
Here’s a selection of pics taken throughout the month, hopefully giving a snap shot of what we’ve been getting up to. It’s been full on with the rut taking place in the enclosure, our breeding bulls do now seem a bit less enthusiastic after a busy six weeks for them! We’ve also been bringing two calves at a time down to the Paddocks to halter train them. They usually spend around four days here in which we take them out on morning walks to get them used to seeing traffic, bikes, their own reflections in shiny windows and whatever else Glenmore can throw at us at 8am! Christmas sleigh training for our three year old Christmas Reindeer begins too. So far Adzuki, Haricot and Hemp have been trained and they’ve all been total pros. During the October holidays when our 11am Hill Trip sells out we’ve been putting on an afternoon Hill Trip too. Funnily enough, during the rain and wind of Storm Babet we did not require this attentional visit. But after the storm we’ve been treated to some gorgeous autumnal weather and the first decent snow on the hills of the season.
Amongst all of this we’ve also managed to get the October newsletter written, printed and sent out to our lovely adopters! Until it’s safely in the hands of our adopters I’ve left all calf names out of the blog.
2nd of October – Sherlock watching over Bordeaux whilst she eats her breakfast.4th of October – Haricot puling the sleigh like a pro -his second time ever!5th of October- Olympic looking very handsome pulling the sleigh with very special cargo on board – Tilly and her grand children!7th of October – Fly looking very soggy on an incredibly wet day! She’s 16 and is now of of the oldest reindeer in our herd.7th of October – Emm, our wonderful volunteer, is here brightening up even the wettest of days, alongside Holy Moley and calf.10th of October – Druid, excellent at striking a pose!12th of October – Cicero and Lupin vying for their moment in the blog.13th of October – A morning at the farm to help Tilly feed the bulls. Here’s Busby, cheeky as ever!18th of October – Checking in with some of the cows in Sherlock’s breeding group. Here we have Pumpkin, Torch and Pip.19th of October – An incredibly wet Hill Trip. Gloriana and Borlotti closest to the camera with the herd behind, waiting for their lunch. 23rd of October – Blue skies!! Jenga, Sunflower and Feta posing beautifully.24th of October – Borlotti and her cute calf with a big pile of breakfast.26th of October – Ryvita, Sambar and Sika leading a lovely free range group of girls.
I love September! The reindeer look super, we’re busy with free ranging reindeer, we name the calves and we start learning their individual personalities, plus the rut kicks off. Having said that, I planned a two week holiday in one of my favourite months – must remember not to do that again! So there is a big gap in the photos for this month’s blog, but I’ve made up for it by just sharing more from the same day.
Just a reminder – we don’t reveal the names of the calves online until our adopters receive their newsletter next month.
2nd of September- Sambar (in the background) and Okapi. Both now 15 years old and looking great for their age. This was taken on one of my reindeer retrieval missions.3rd of September – Brie and her wee daughter. Back in the enclosure and both looking good after a summer free ranging. 4th of September -Mangetout looking beautiful on a lovely autumnal afternoon. Her daughter and her new sister (belonging to mum Dante) are the calves behind her.19th of September (a) – After a TWO week holiday, I’m back to work and the first job is to split the reindeer for the rut. Exciting times! Here is Fiona putting some cows out on Silver Mount, an area within the hill enclosure.19th of September (b) – Step two is to add the bull! Fiona and I took Sherlock for a walk to the enclosure. Here he is off to find his girls – a man on a mission!19th of September (c) – Our other breeding bull is three year old Jelly. He looks a bit less sure about the situation compared to Sherlock but he quickly got the idea.20th of September – Holy Moley and her calf behind. Holy Moley is delighted to be back in the enclosure after the summer in the hills. Here she is on the hunt for more hand feed.21st of September – Sherlock with some of his girls – Bordeaux, Pip and Jenga.22nd of September – Trying to get a nice pic of Mushy and Jenga but Bordeaux wants in on the action. Or maybe it’s the white bag under my arm.22nd of September – Christmas Reindeer, Frost and Adzuki, looking handsome in the late afternoon sunshine.26th of September – Emmental is the first to the feed bag on today’s Hill Trip.26th of September – Girls out free ranging! These are some of our single ladies, either too young to breed or retired from breeding. From L to R: Vanilla, Sorbet, Diamond, Sambar, Lolly, Solero and Suidhe (sticking her tongue out!)26th of September – Catching up with this old lady on the free range! Diamond is now 11 years old and looking super. She is stripping the velvet off her antlers.
I can’t help but smile when I see a reindeer yawn. They have the most wonderful facial expressions, produce the best sounds, and have the wobbliest of chins. I always try to capture the moment on camera but I’m usually way too slow and miss the moment. Over the past year I’ve been compiling a folder of my best reindeer yawns ready to produce a blog one day. Despite reindeer herding being my full time job, at the rate I’m going it would probably take several years before I’ve captured a decent amount of silly pictures and videos.
Sooo… I mentioned my blog idea to Hen and Andi recently whist *working very hard* in the office. Of course, they came to my rescue and more or less instantly produced many glorious pictures of yawning reindeer to bolster my collection.
So here goes, in no order or for any great reason other than hopefully making people smile. Enjoy!
Check out the chin wobble on Dr Seuss! Video by Andi – October 2021.Magnus – March 2017.Christie – December 2021.Holy Moley finding fame tiring – March 2022. Ibex – March 2022. Kiruna – yawning or perhaps laughing at a good joke?! Summer 2021. Sambar – September 2019.Hamish yawning on the job! Christmas training – September 2013.Stripping your velvet is clearly a tiring business for Scolty – September 2017.Sholto – looking very majestic mid yawn! September 2011.Kipling on the free-range – August 2018.Merida – August 2018.Camembert – free-ranging April 2022Malawi – the oldest reindeer currently in the herd, aged 16, definitely deserves a yawny snooze in the spring sunshine – April 2022. Moulting is very tiring for Celt – June 2021.
So there is often great confusion over what reindeer like to nom on and if you ever find yourself in that special situation where your dinner date is a reindeer we would hate for you to be unprepared!
The key to any nice dinner is of course a nice accompanying beverage; reindeer love fresh water from a mountain burn or pool… or even an upland lochan – they turn up their noses at tap water so that’s a big no no, I’ve seen reindeer lap up rain droplets up instead of lowering themselves to drinking the tap water we provide them on Christmas events!
As you guys all know by now from reading all our previous reindeer centric blogs, reindeer themselves are an arctic animal so they like their salad with a northern twist! These guys need arctic/sub-arctic habitat and plants to have happy tummies (think actimel for reindeer!)
Reindeer LOVE lichen… I mean L.O.V.E lichen! Although partial to a bit of tree lichen (you could add it in for flair!) the mainstay for the reindeer are ground growing lichens, they are the only animal excepting gastropods (snails/slugs) to have evolved the digestive enzyme to break down lichen.
Lichen covering the forest floor
Lichen is the main source of food for reindeer in the winter when the rest of the grazing has died back for the year and forms springy carpets at the bases of heathers and sedges up on the mountains here. However, interestingly enough lichen contains barely enough nutrients and energy to sustain a gnat let alone a reindeer. Thus in the winter the reindeer very cleverly slow their metabolism right down and the young stop growing – being a reindeer is very much a feast and famine business.
NB. It may be best to plan a summer dinner with your chosen reindeer.
The summer diet is much more varied, it’ll make for a multi-course experience! Once spring hits, the mountains turn green and all the lush grazing once again unfurls. Reindeer will eat almost anything montane, chewy and fibrous (reindeer have adapted to live off low nutrient arctic plants) – there is a common misconception that a lovely field of grass would float their boats but in actual fact it would be the equivalent of us living off a complete diet of clotted cream and would end in some unhappy digestive systems!
Lilac and Hornet, roaming around in the lush grazing
Reindeer will graze on an array of montane sedges and heathers as well as leafier vegetation such as birch and blaeberry (wild blueberry) leaves in the summer months. In the autumn reindeer will do anything for a wild mushroom; their digestive system allows them to eat even the super poisonous Fly agaric mushroom, however mushrooms often = drunk reindeer which is more than hilarious!
Reindeer will also eat some rather unusual things to gain nutrients if they are lacking, such as cast antler bone (full of great minerals!) as well as the velvet skin they shed from their antlers in the late summer – yum! We have ascertained that while they will eat their own velvet, they draw the line at anyone else’s!
Kate shedding the velvet from her antlers
Sambar shedding velvet
Whilst this is the mainstay of a natural reindeer diet, if you’ve visited us here you may know we provide a supplementary feed for the reindeer for several reasons – reindeer are greedy and it ensures we have a lovely visit, we give them a wee bit of a helping hand at times of year when grazing is scarce and finally for half the year we use a 1200 acre enclosure and providing a supplement mix ensures all of our yummy natural grazing can re-grow.
First things first if you’re going to make a mix for your reindeer you’ll need to acquire a cement mixer. It is the sure fire way to make a yummy and well mixed batch, your dinner won’t go well if items are poorly distributed! We like to mix with a tonne of hay-mix (chopped up hay) which is covered in garlic molasses. The garlic is great for the digestive system but it does mean us herders have a garlicy scent most of the time. It can be a very lonely existence this reindeer herding! Next a splash of barley and sugar-beet alongside a general sheep feed full of good grains and our last ingredient is rather special. It’s called dark grains and looks pretty boring BUT is by far the coolest thing in the mix.
Dark Grains
It’s a by-product of alcohol distilling (malt whisky production), obtained by drying solid residues of fermented grain to which certain solubles (pot ale syrup or evaporated spent wash) have been added. Unfortunately all the alcohol is all gone by this stage and the dark grains themselves are rather bitter so maybe mix them in well!
One final word of wisdom if you want to posh up your dinner is to sneak some seaweed in there – we discovered the reindeer loved the stuff after it was used to fertilize a patch of tree saplings and they ate it all. It’s now something we regularly provide for the reindeer in our paddocks and enclosure over the summer months.
We wish you the best of luck and hope if you ever have a reindeer date dilemma we’ve provided some key tips to a great evening or you!
Gandi and Puddock with their main course of lichen!
