Carol Borton and her family own Reindeer Ranch LLC, a business that raises reindeer and does public reindeer displays. You can see her reindeer Saturday at 10:30 a.m. at the Oshtemo Branch Library.
“I can tell people that reindeer fly, and they fly very well, and that I’ve flown with him—and be 100 percent honest," says Borton. "And people look at me like ‘Ok.’ I just don’t tell them it was in a 747 air cargo plane.”
Borton says after raising five kids on their farm, she and her husband were looking for something different--a kind of livestock they could pet.
And to Borton they are a lot like pets. Each calf spends up to a month’s time in the house. Borton says it gets them ready for those long photo shoots with kids.
“When they’re in the house, I mean, they’re laying right with us or they’re constantly getting pet on. I’m picking up their feet, I’m just messing with them all the time," she says.
"So once they get out into the public, they just don’t think anything about it. It’s just more people, it’s just somebody else to pet them.”
7 Facts About Reindeer
- A reindeer is basically just a domestic caribou—a hardy deer species that lives in cold places like Canada and northern Russia.
- Remember that Christmas song lyric, "Up on the houstop. Click, click, click"? Reindeer's ankles have a tendon that makes a light clicking sound when they walk. Borton says this sound helps reindeer to find each other in a snow storm. The noise of them clicking all together also confuses predators.
- A reindeer's fur is so thick that they can go swimming without getting wet and lay in the snow without melting it. This is because they can regulate their leg temperature to just above freezing, so they don't lose any heat from their legs.
- Reindeer can live in warmer climates, but not more humid ones. Reindeer absorb moisture out of the air so that they can go longer without drinking water. But if it's too humid, a reindeer will not expel moisture and it will build up it its lungs causing pneumonia.
- Both male and female reindeer have antlers
- Just like cows, reindeer are ruminants. They have multiple stomach chambers. Borton says this could be why they burp a lot.
- How did this whole "reindeer fly" thing get started? Borton says it's probably because of how they look when they run, like they're about to take off.
