He Raises Reindeer As A Labor Of Love

LARWILL - Click-click. Click-click.

It's not the sound of a woman walking in high heels or the ticking of the watch on the opening credits of "60 Minutes."

Click-click is the sound reindeer make with their hooves when they walk as their joints move, said Bob Vandermark.

"One characteristic of a reindeer is that their feet actually click," he said. "It's the joints that move when they walk."

Vandermark should know. He has raised reindeer at his home in Larwill on U.S. 30 for 12 to 14 years.

"It's just a beautiful animal. It's fun to watch," he said. "I love these animals. I love to raise them."

In the past, he has also raised white tail deer, fallow deer, elk and now reindeer. Reindeer are his favorite, he said.

Currently, he has two bulls and eight cows. A bull is a male reindeer and a cow is a female reindeer. He said he expects to have eight calves this spring, which he will sell. He has no plans to sell his breeding stock, though.

To the untrained eye, it may be tough to tell a bull from a cow. Both the male and female have horns. Even a six-month- old calf has horns, he said.

There's at least one way Vandermark said he could tell.

"You can tell just by their stature, the way they stand," he said.

Vandermark doesn't name his reindeer anymore, except one of the two bulls he has named Dancer. Dancer is 3 years old and his horns are about as tall as he is. Reindeer, like Dancer, stand 4 to 4-1/2 feet tall.

"The cows weigh 300 pounds. The bulls weigh 400 pounds," he said.

Dancer is not the oldest reindeer in the two herds. The oldest, whose horns were cut off for safety reasons, is the other bull, who is 8 years old.

"They actually shed their horns every year, both the bulls and the cows," Vandermark said. "I hate to see their horns shed because they're so beautiful, but they grow back and bigger."

Regardless of size, age or sex, they all eat about the same amount.

"They don't eat any more than a cow. I feed 10 reindeer a gallon of grain a day plus hay. They drink a lot of water," he said.

He also provides them with medicine that one would provide to any domestic animal.

The winter is not any worse on the reindeer nor does it cause the need for more medicine. In fact, Vandermark said, the reindeer prefer the winter.

"They love the winter," he said. "It's like air conditioning to them. When there's snow on the ground, they will drink snow as well as water."

As far as the temperament of the reindeer, he said, "Their (temperament) is based on how you raise them."

Reindeer were not original inhabitants of North America. Vandermark said they were shipped by the U.S. government in 1890 to Alaska from Scandinavian countries. The government shipped them as a meat source for Eskimos.

It was the Scandinavian people who bred the reindeer from the larger caribou in those countries.

"People will say, 'I thought reindeer were a fairy tale,' but they are actually real," he said. "In Europe, they bred horses down and called them ponies. The same with the reindeer.

"In Alaska, it's illegal to own reindeer. Only the Eskimos can legally own reindeer," he said.

Vandermark said anyone who owns reindeer from Canada in Alaska must be able to prove they came from Canada and are not Alaskan reindeer.

Vandermark plans to keep his own reindeer for a while, selling only his overstock. A calf, he said, goes for about $3,000.

"They're a nice display animal. You can use them in the Christmas season for display. They're easy to maintain. They're fun," he said.