Are Santa's reindeer female

Are Santa's reindeer female?

If they have antlers on Christmas Eve, most likely yes. Adult males drop their antlers after the autumn rut, and females keep theirs until spring.

The Reindeer Herders' Association, Paliskuntain yhdistys, sets out the calendar. Males shed their antlers after the autumn rutting season, and females after calving in spring. The British charity PTES draws the Christmas conclusion: a reindeer with antlers on Christmas Eve is likely female.

There are two catches. Castrated males keep their antlers far longer than intact males, so a sleigh reindeer with antlers can be one of those. And not every female grows antlers, as PTES points out, especially where food is short. Our verdict: Santa's team is mostly female, with a few castrated males in harness.

What do herders call male and female reindeer?

In Finnish, a grown female is a vaadin, a grown male a hirvas and a castrated male a härkä.

Herders have a word for almost every age and kind of reindeer. The Reindeer Herders' Association lists the main ones in its English brochure. Try them out at the fire after your ride; it is a good way to get the herding stories going.

The sizes differ a lot. Females weigh 60 to 100 kg and males 90 to 180 kg, according to the Association. Over the winter a reindeer can lose up to 20% of its autumn weight, which is one reason farms feed their herds in the cold months.

Which reindeer pull the sleighs in Rovaniemi?

Mostly castrated males, according to PTES, though every farm has its own herd. Ask your herder which ones are in harness.

On every ride we list, a herder or guide leads the line, and the reindeer walk or trot along the trail. You sit in the sleigh, often on reindeer hides. You do not steer. Some farms hand out a reindeer driving licence afterwards, a fun souvenir certificate.

The real difference between rides is how long you are in the sleigh. The farm visit is a 500-metre loop. The safari with a Sámi heritage family covers 2.5 km and ends with hot drinks in a kota, a good setting for questions about the herd. For the full price picture, read our guide to reindeer ride prices.

What do reindeer eat in winter?

Mostly lichen. The Reindeer Herders' Association says they dig it out from under as much as a metre of snow, finding it mainly by smell.

Reindeer lichen is the famous one, the pale grey moss-like plant on the forest floor. The Association says reindeer are the only large herbivore that can live on lichen, and Wikipedia adds that their gut holds a reindeer-specific bacterium that helps them digest it. Digging through the snow for it even has a name in English: cratering.

Where old lichen-rich forests have gone, the herders feed their reindeer in winter, the Association says, to keep them in good condition and help them give birth to strong calves. That is the feeding you join on a farm visit, and guests on the forest ride say time to feed the reindeer after the sleigh was a highlight.

Feed and photograph the reindeer, then about 40 minutes in the sleigh through a snowy forest and hot drinks by the fire.

★ 4.7 · 3 hours · from $200

Explore the 2 km reindeer sleigh ride through the forest → Tour details

Why does Santa have nine reindeer?

Eight come from a poem published in 1823, and Rudolph joined in 1939. Real reindeer have never needed names to pull a sleigh, but farm reindeer often have them.

The poem A Visit from St. Nicholas, better known as The Night Before Christmas, named the first eight: Dasher, Dancer, Prancer, Vixen, Comet, Cupid, and two whose names were Dutch at first, Dunder and Blixem, later Donder and Blitzen. Rudolph came much later, from a booklet that Robert L. May wrote for the American store chain Montgomery Ward.

Finland has plenty of real candidates. The Reindeer Herders' Association counts about 200,000 reindeer left after the autumn round-ups, 120,000 to 130,000 calves born each spring and almost 5,000 reindeer owners. The herding area is split into 54 cooperatives.

What are the reindeer doing this winter?

The autumn round-ups run from late September to January, the males drop their antlers after the rut, and the females carry their calves until May.

The herding year starts on 1 June and runs to 31 May. In autumn the rut begins in September, and the round-ups follow, when herders gather the reindeer into fences to count, mark and sort them. The Association calls autumn the harvest time of a reindeer herder, and the round-ups end in January.

Spring is calving time. The females start to calve during May, and calf marking keeps the herders busy through June and July. If you drive in Lapland this winter, slow down: the Association says the risk of reindeer accidents on the roads is highest from November to January.

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