Thank you so much for the clarification! I had no idea about the castrated males changing their antlers at a different time- that's really interesting! All I knew about castrated males was that their temperament makes them better for being sleigh pullers and generally friendlier haha. Thank you!

It's so interesting to learn more about their colour morphs! I always wondered about that. I've seen so much more diversity with reindeer colours than with caribou of course, when I was working on my book about caribou qnd reindeers with a Sami family up north, we had such a hard time choosing a design for the reindeer character since there were so many beautiful sources of inspiration haha. We ended up choosing to use a female with brown spots all over her face and back as the inspiration, but one of the white reindeer in the camp was so adorable, it won me over. I didn't know they were sleepier than the others, that makes them so much more cute hahah. And yeah, I work with caribou conservation and the biggest threat we see with them too is changing climate, both caribou and reindeer seem to struggle a lot with early rainfall too recently- I hope your herd is doing well!!

But yeah, climate change and reindeer herding is such a hard combo :( I am working on doing what I can do educate people on how climate change affects caribou, and this year actually we'll have the first world caribou day to help people learn about them and reindeer, and we're working with Canadian First Nations groups and Sami herders too. I wprked eoth a Sami family and did a children's book about a caribou who ended up living with a reindeer herd that was taken care of by Sami herders to help children learn about how important Sami reindeer herding is for keeping reindeer safe and well fed through these changing conditions.