For anyone that has visited the reindeer on a Hill Trip, you’ll know that we do a small talk about the reindeer before we feed them. If I’m not the person chatting, I like to stand back and enjoy the mischief that the reindeer come up with when they’re getting impatient waiting for their food. There are a few techniques that the reindeer use to try and get their food early and I thought it would make an amusing blog for you wonderful readers.
Considering that reindeer have epic senses of smell, it isn’t surprising that they can sniff out where the food is (and to be honest we don’t hide it either) their food is carried up to the reindeer in big green sacks, so they’re super obvious. If one of us (herders) is taking a Hill Trip by ourselves, we are conducting a talk whilst trying to deter reindeer snuffling about our feed bags, kicking our bags or even trying to bite through the bags! Which I suspect leads to great entertainment for our visitors. So having an extra pair of hands there is always appreciated. Now down to the good stuff…
The first technique is to kick the feed sack, obviously in the hopes that food may fall out. But as you can imagine those big feet can cause a bit of damage to our poor feed sacks. Whilst chatting away, you will have a group of keen reindeer pawing away at the bag which is really distracting!
The worst culprits for this are usually the yearlings as through the previous winter they received preferential feeding from the green sacks and I suspect they’re frustrated that they can’t now eat from the bags- quite rightly so, extra food is always awesome!
For the next tactic, one specific reindeer comes to mind, and that is Magnum a very handsome 2-year-old who loves to chew our feed sacks and create holes from which he can steal food from. He is very skilled at it and if you’re not paying attention can quickly break his way through our feed sacks. Due to the way that we herders carry the food up the hill, holey bags lead to reindeer food going down the back of our shirts, which isn’t a great feeling.
If kicking the sack hasn’t worked, some reindeer then rush over to the visitors in anticipation for the sweet snack they get while visitors hand feed. This can often happen straight away, happening as soon as we have stopped the group to chat to visitors. Once the reindeer have had a quick smell of folks’ pockets, they will head back to the feed sack again. Yearlings Nile and Elbe are guilty of this and are prone to getting right into peoples faces hoping for food.
One of the final techniques I will mention is the puppy dog eye approach. This usually occurs when the group has dispersed, and visitors are off taking pictures of reindeer. Herders will stand holding the empty feed bag and a few reindeer like Druid, Bordeaux, and Olympic will stand next to us patiently waiting for extra food to come their way. Don’t tell the reindeer, but this is usually the best way to manipulate a herder into giving them extra food! When it comes to some of the tamer reindeer, like Nile, Winnie and Elbe puppy dog eyes progress into snuffling through human pockets, leaning their heads on humans and general personal space invasion until they break us herders and we give in.
Amy
