| Yukon Quest Dog Mushing Race |  |
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Large Animal Research Station, University of Alaska, Fairbanks
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May 6, 2007
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| Fairbanks is a small town, and we got introduced to someone who is working and living at the Large Animal Research Station up on Yankovich Rd. So day we met up with a whole bunch of very nice people and had a picnic barbeque of grilled reindeer, fresh fruit salad, calamata olives, cheese cake, potatoes and other good things. Then we went on a special tour of the facility and got to see lots of musk oxen and reindeer.
Both species were having their calves. The reindeer are semi-domesticated, but the musk oxen are very ornery and will kick you or gore you as soon as not. They'd all been combed out of their winter wool, called qiviut, so were looking quite sleek for musk oxen. The qiviut is feathery light and soft as silk. It has an extremely light lanolin-like substance and smells similar to sheep wool. |
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Musk Oxen are being studied here at the many acres of well-cared for pastureland of the Large Animal Research Station. They are being studied so that we can understand how to save them from extinction. Also, because they are a very, very old species, we study how their particular adaptions to the arctic have enabled them to survive so very well. They utilize so much of what they eat, for instance, that their droppings have little or no value as fertilizer. |
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| This is a bull. Notice the horns!
Most of them had already had their winter coats of qiviut removed, which is why they don't have the extremely shaggy look you might have seen in other pictures. The research station sells the qiviut to spinners and weavers, who process it and make the most delightful and warm mittens, sweaters, hats and socks. I would love to have a sweater made of qiviut, but by the time the wool becomes a piece of clothing, it costs somewhere in the neighborhood of $200 or more. However, I have heard that what keeps the musk ox warm in the arctic works very well, better than almost anything else, to keep US warm, too. |
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| One female decided to check and see if I had any treats.
She seemed to pick me out, especially. |
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| But when she got this close, and we asked if we could pet, we were advised that musk oxen are extremely ornery and wild. They might be happy to get a treat (we didn't have any) but when the treats ran out, they'd immediately bit and kick and gore.
So no, petting was NOT advised. She followed me along the fence for a while, anyway. |
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| Two yearling calves checked us out. |  |
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| There had been two calves born just this past week. Here we sat a goodly distance from the very wary moms and tried to spy out the babies. In the wild the moms hide the babies under their bellies and coats and this makes them almost impossible to see! After we were there for about fifteen minutes I managed to get a shot of a calf. |  |
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| Reindeer
This reindeer bull was very protective and didn't like us one little bit! He started snorting and posturing at us long before we came up even with his paddock. Snort snort snort! |
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Mama reindeer and day-old calves. Our friend told us that the calves are born all jumbled up! |
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| Mama, wait for me! |  |
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| This squeeny li'l guy was walking towards me "maaaaaing" and looking like he thought I was his new best friend! We all held our breath, because behind him Mama was starting to look nervous.
Then when he got about ten feet from me she called him back, but stood there, just giving me the hairy eyeball... |
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