If you have ever looked closely at reindeer, you may have noticed that the edges of their ears come in different shapes. One reindeer may have a small notch in its ear, while another may have several different ones. These are reindeer earmarks. Every reindeer owner has an individual earmark that is notched into the ears of their reindeer.
The earmark tells us who the reindeer belongs to. Reindeer spend most of the year roaming freely across vast areas. The earmark is a permanent form of identification that stays with the reindeer throughout its life.
An experienced reindeer herder can recognise earmarks visually, accurately, quickly and from a distance. Those who are particularly skilled at reading earmarks know all the marks used in their own area and can even recognise the hand of the person who made them. They also know many of the earmarks used in neighbouring reindeer herding districts.
A skilled reindeer herder can recognise an earmark from the shape of a reindeer’s ear from such a distance that the animal can be observed through binoculars without disturbing it at all. This is an important skill because reindeer spend most of their lives roaming freely in nature, much like wild animals.
An earmark can also tell a family story
A reindeer earmark can tell us much more than who owns the animal. It can tell us about the owner’s family and relatives, family history and the traditions of reindeer herding.
Earmarks are often passed down from one generation to the next. Marks belonging to members of the same family or extended family often resemble one another visually, forming families of related marks. A skilled reader can therefore see much more in an earmark than the identity of an individual reindeer owner.
Children in reindeer herding families often receive their own earmark when they are still very young. In our family, the children of the youngest generation have received their reindeer earmarks soon after birth – one of them even before receiving an official name. That is how important the connection to one’s own earmark is in reindeer herding culture.
Your own earmark also follows you beyond the ears of your reindeer. Earmarks are a popular motif in jewellery, and people often use them to mark their personal belongings. Instead of writing a name on clothing or even a pair of rubber boots, you can simply draw your own earmark.
Calf marking
Reindeer calves are born mainly in May and June, usually out in nature, far from human disturbance. Around midsummer, the reindeer are gathered briefly into an enclosure for calf marking, after which they return to their free-ranging lives.
Calf marking is one of the first major tasks of the reindeer herding year.
During calf marking, the reindeer are gathered into a marking enclosure. The calves are first caught and a large plastic number tag is placed around each calf’s neck. They are then released to calmly find their mothers again. Once the calves and mothers have reunited, the herders move quietly and calmly among the reindeer, disturbing them as little as possible, and observe which female reindeer each numbered calf is following.
The calf’s mother is identified by her earmark, which also reveals the owner of the calf. The observations are recorded on numbered lists, where each herder draws the earmark of the mother belonging to each numbered calf. Once all the numbers have been identified, the lists are compared together. If there are differing opinions about an earmark, those cases are checked again together.
Once the owners of all the calves have been established, the calves are caught again and the owner’s earmark is made in their ears with a sharp knife. Earmarking may only be done by someone who knows exactly what they are doing. The skill is practised using other methods. In our family, for example, orange peels have been put to good use by the children learning how to make the marks.
The time the reindeer spend in the enclosure is kept as short as possible. A single herd can usually be handled within one or two days. Our calf-marking enclosures are located close to the reindeer’s natural summer grazing areas, which means that gathering the reindeer and marking the calves can often be completed in a single night. The work is indeed done mainly at night because the air is cooler then, making things easier for the reindeer. And here in the middle of summer, we have natural light around the clock.
Once the calves have been marked, they are released again to continue their natural lives, roaming freely in their native environment.
Earmarking and reindeer welfare
In skilled hands, notching the ear is an extremely quick procedure and often completely bloodless. Even so, it surely causes the calf some short-term pain. When we look at the reindeer’s entire life, however, earmarking has a very significant positive impact on its welfare. After all, the mark stays with the reindeer for life.
Reindeer are semi-wild animals that spend most of their lives roaming freely. Being handled by people is always stressful for them to some degree. Prolonged capture and restraint can cause a reindeer considerable stress.
A permanent earmark that can be recognised from a distance greatly reduces the need to catch a reindeer during its lifetime. Its owner can be identified while the reindeer is moving freely, allowing the animal to continue its life in its own environment without repeated capture and handling.
Why is the mark made in the ear?
Domestic animals are generally identified with plastic ear tags that are attached through the ear. The life of a free-ranging reindeer places very different demands on an identification method.
A plastic ear tag can easily be torn out in natural conditions. Dirt can also collect between the hole in the ear and the plastic, increasing the risk of infection. With a free-ranging animal, an infection might not be discovered and treated in time and, in the worst case, could prove fatal.
If a plastic ear tag were large enough to be read from a distance through binoculars, it would certainly place so much strain on a reindeer’s small ears that the animal would scratch the bothersome foreign object out of its ear. Even a very small additional plastic tag sometimes receives this treatment from a reindeer. A large, flapping cattle tag is therefore simply not an option for identifying reindeer.
A notched earmark is a permanent form of identification that works in every season and in all natural conditions. It causes the reindeer no problems later in life.
What about the future?
It is possible, and perhaps even likely, that technological development will one day make it possible to identify reindeer using a remotely readable microchip implanted under the skin, or some similar method. A system that works in the conditions in which reindeer live and allows an animal to be identified from a distance. When that happens, we will be able to stop notching their ears altogether.
It will also be time to say goodbye to a centuries-old earmarking tradition and the culture surrounding it. The thought feels a little sad. Like letting go of something. Earmarks carry family histories, traditions and stories, and a person’s own mark can be important to them even before they are old enough to understand what it means.
Culture, however, is not a sustainable justification for causing unnecessary pain, even when that pain is short-lived. If a painless method suitable for the life of a reindeer is developed one day, then in my view, the culture of traditional earmarking can move into our memories. The marks themselves can live on in jewellery, clothing, rubber boots and, above all, in stories.
For now, there is no alternative to notching the ears that provides the same benefits. At present, when we consider the reindeer’s entire life and welfare, traditional earmarking is the best available way to identify its owner.
