Reindeer ranching
Brett Krager grew up on a New Raymer, Colo., cattle ranch and during his years in FFA at Prairie School, he was looking for a way to stay in production agriculture that wasn’t necessarily the cattle business. When he found reindeer, he jumped into researching, made it his Supervised Agricultural Experience or SAE and, he said, never looked back.
He purchased his first reindeer, Reggie, a steer, from a zoo in Minnesota. He said the reindeer raising community isn’t unlike the cattle industry in the way connections are made and shared. There are two trade organizations: Reindeer Breeders and Owners Association and the Reindeer Farmers Association. Krager is currently the treasurer of RFA.
Reindeer reproduction, he said, is challenging. While there are a few successful AI cases in the U.S., they are limited. Krager has a bull that has sired the calves born into his herd. Reindeer resources are limited, but Colorado State University and Dr. Wade Shoemaker at Countryside Veterinary Clinic near Greeley, Colo., have both been solid resources for Krager. With limited research, he said finding a veterinary practitioner willing to take on the trial and error is a boon.
MANAGING AND FEEDING
His reindeer are on a dry lot to allow him to better manage feed intake and parasites reindeer are susceptible to, like ticks. Local alfalfa and Purina reindeer feed make up the reindeer ration. A deworming protocol is in place with regular fecal samples to confirm it’s effectiveness.
He currently has three females that are hopefully bred and that will be confirmed through blood tests this winter. The females are the ones Krager calls on to make holiday appearances, now in his 10th year.
“The males lose their antlers in late fall and early winter and the girls hold onto theirs until springtime,” he said. “They’re )the females) a little more docile, too, and they’re a bit friendlier so they get to travel all winter.”
The reindeer make appearances nearly every afternoon or evening from Thanksgiving to nearly Christmas.
“We do everything from big, really cool corporate events to holiday parties to small private family visits,” he said. “We got to go see all the kids after their school program (at Prairie School). We’ve done educational displays to help kids learn fun facts about science, too.”
Krager doesn’t anticipate scaling to the point where he can sell seedstock reindeer, but he does plan to continue maintaining and growing his herd and making holiday visits.
He said people are often surprised that the reindeer are small — only about the size of a deer weighing in at about 350 to 400 pounds.
Krager said he can not confirm nor deny whether the reindeer pulling Santa’s sleigh are males or females.
“If you want to get super technical, a lot of it goes back to hormones,” he said. “Antlers are hormone related depending on whether you have bulls or cows or steers. We could get technical and say some of them may not be girls.”
He fields lots of questions about flying reindeer and he said he does tell kids that it is a busy time of year and if Dasher or Dancer were to fall ill and need a replacement, his herd is at the ready to pull the sleigh.
