| ISSUE 3 | FEBRUARY/MARCH 2024 |
THE REINDEER EXPRESS
IT’S SHED SEASON!!
We have been waiting in anticipation for our deer to start dropping their antlers for a few months now. Both male and female Reindeer have antlers. Their antlers naturally fall off every winter/spring and new ones start to grow in their place almost immediately. This is a painless, natural process that all ungulates with antlers go through on a yearly basis.
Twinkle was our first to loose an antler and started off our excitement! She is still packing around her other side, even though her new antler has grown over an inch already on the side she has dropped. We anticipate that she will drop the other side any day now.
The next to loose an antler was our boy Pepper. He finally dropped one side weeks after Twinkle, and Bucky wasn’t far behind him. Our bulls both lost their other side fairly quickly after their first had fallen off. They both look pretty funny, but adorable at the same time!
Diamond has also dropped one side, but is holding strong on keeping the other side.
Nena, Elle, and Monroe are holding out on us up to this point, but we are looking forward to the day they start shedding theirs. We walk out in anticipation of finding another antler laying on the ground every time.
Interesting fact: All 4 of our Reindeer lost their right side antlers first.
MEET THE REINDEER: ELLE
Elle is our big beautiful girl. She has turned into an absolute sweetheart and is an absolute joy to be around. She’s also what we refer to as a very smart Reindeer. When the feeders start to get low, Elle will move to one end or the other so she can stand on the end and tip the whole feeder up. This makes all the feed slide down right in front of her so that it’s easier to eat. Cracks us up every time.
SYRINGA MOUNTAIN SCHOOL FIELD TRIP
We had the pleasure of having 14, 2nd grade students out to the ranch to learn about and interact with the Reindeer. They had just finished up their research unit on Caribou in school, where they learned all about the species and the herder culture. We would be lying if we didn’t say that those students probably educated us more than we did them, and were quite the little experts!
Each student shared facts that they learned. It was really cool to see them pointing them out on a live Reindeer. They all got to feed and interact with the deer. I can’t even begin to imagine the feeling those young children felt when they were told that they get to go see a live animal of that nature, after they learned all about them. That sounds like a dream come true!
A big thank you goes out to Syringa Mountain School for trusting us to have their young learners out to our ranch. We really appreciate the opportunity and hope to have many more of your students visit in the future.
36 HOUR BLIZZARD
Our weather has been very abnormal for winter in Idaho. We have been getting whiplash here at the ranch. We get hit with a snow storm, followed by a week of warm weather, followed by another storm, and again warm weather. This has been a challenge with mud as well as snow removal. The most notable storm of this winter season was a 36 hour blizzard. Snow on top of 60mph winds made for an interesting couple of days.
As we thought, the Reindeer seemed to love even the worst of this weather event. Us on the other hand did not. We would plow and shovel, but within minutes you couldn’t even tell. We chased our tails around, just to make sure that we could still get around to get things done.
Our ranch sits on the opposite side of a 200 acre hay field, with nothing stopping the snow from blowing right into us. When we get strong winds the drifts that end up surrounding us are impressive and tough to deal with. Sometimes all that you can do is ride it out and hope everything comes out alright on the other side. After 24 hours of fighting it, we had to give up for the night and do just that, hope everything would be alright through the night. We made one final visit out to the Reindeer enclosure to make sure everyone was alright and secure everything the best that we could before turning in for the night.
The next morning we awoke to slightly calmer winds and cloudy sky’s. We trekked our way to the pens through the snow drifts to check on everyone and make sure everything was alright. All the Reindeer were happy and running around enjoying themselves as usual. We were fortunate that everything stayed together and everyone was alright. It was evident immediately the work ahead of us, clearing snow and digging out feeders and waters. Everything was incased in snow.
The boys pen got the worst of it. It sits on the east side of the property and filled their pen with 4 feet of snow. With a 6 foot fence being cut down by 4 feet, this was an immediate problem. Looking at Bucky and Pepper standing on top of the snow, it seemed that they would be able to step over the fence at any time. After plowing a path to their pen we had to remove all the snow out of their pen with a tractor.
It was a long few days, but we are grateful that all the animals were alright and nothing was damaged.
TRAINING
One thing that we do behind the scenes, is always making training improvements with our Reindeer. We want a herd that is sociable with all people, easy to work with, and are trusting of us. This takes a lot of time, patience, and dedication. Every spare minute we have, we are working with the Reindeer to achieve the highest level of sociability possible. This is done through exposing them to different things that they haven’t experienced before.
Lead training is a big part of our program here. Catching and working with the Reindeer for a period of time on a lead rope gets them uses to being handled. During this time we are also able to get the accustomed to other things, such as touching them, other than on their face or neck. We run our hands down their legs, eventually picking up their feet. This comes in handy for when we need to trim feet, or inspect any injuries they may sustain. The name of the game is making things less stressful for them and easier on us.
One of the biggest concerns for any animal owner is making things as low stress as possible on our animals. We constantly strive for this with trust and mutual respect from animal to handler. We put our animals first throughout this process and it really shows with how fast our Reindeer progress. They trust us and we trust them. We wouldn’t have it any other way.
ANNOUNCEMENT: HARVEST HOST’S
We are excited to announce that we have recently teamed up with Harvest Host’s, as a host location. Harvest Host’s is a membership based RV’ing community that has thousands of locations to stay all over the country. We believe in their mission and are very excited to have guest stay at the ranch. We look forward to meeting some members of the Harvest Host’s community this year!
As a host, we provide a free place for campers and RV’ers to stay the night. In turn they will purchase an item, or experience, to support our small business. Sounds like a win win for everyone to us! We have two spaces a night lined out and reserved for Harvest Host’s members. These are dry lot parking spaces, without hookups. Parking spots will be on road base and manicured to keep the grass knocked down. We look forward to sprucing these spots up as time goes on.
If you have interest in becoming a Harvest Host member, or Host, don’t hesitate to look them up and join in the adventure. Life is too short to not take advantage of opportunities like this, and meet some incredible people along the way!
LOOKING TO THE FUTURE
We have Nick Marrow with Hooves, Humps, and Horns scheduled to come out this month. He is currently attending vet school in Utah, and is an animal trainer that works with all sorts of animals. We are excited for him to come out and look over our herd and pick his brain on what we can be doing better, training and health wise.
We have some things in the works to promote more education to our younger community. We are hoping to get our Reindeer to schools around southern Idaho for an educational display/seminar. We are also working with summer kids programs to have more field trips to the ranch. If you are interested in field trips or having us out to your location, we are offering education events at a discounted rate.
With spring finally here and the snow starting to melt, we are planning on getting back to construction. One permanent shelter is nearly finished. After that we have 3 more shelters to build, quarantine pen fence to complete, and another pen to fully construct before next September. There are also plans in place for some landscaping to spruce up the way things look around here. We are also looking at options for a gift shop setup that we will add before our event in July. Stay tuned, you wont want to miss this one!
WE ARE NOW OPEN FOR TOURS. VISIT OUR WEBSITE AND CLICK ON THE “BOOK NOW” BUTTON FOR AVAILABLE OPTIONS AND TIMES. WE ARE ALSO TAKING RESERVATIONS FOR REINDEER APPEARENCES FOR 2024. IF YOU ARE THINKING ABOUT REINDEER FOR EDUCATION OR YOUR EVENT WE WOULD LOVE TO TALK WITH YOU!
| sawtoothreindeer.com | 1-208-721-1459 | info@sawtoothreindeer.com |