(WBIR-West Knoxville) It's not even Halloween but another holiday looms for one East Tennessee man. He's in charge of taking care of reindeer when they aren't pulling Santa's sleigh.
You may think this time of year is the calm before the storm of the Christmas holidays. But owning a reindeer farm is a year round job.
"Most reindeer have their babies the second half of April. I'm on a calf watch at that time. Don't get a lot of sleep but I have been to see over half of mine actually born. So that's about six weeks where I'm a nervous wreck and I'm pacing more than the mamas are," Kyle Wilson said.
He owns Rocky Hill Reindeer. Kyle Wilson does holiday rentals where he'll take the reindeer to events and he also leases the reindeer for a month or so to zoos and Christmas tree farms.
"I can only do so many because I only have so many reindeer. I usually turn down as much work as I do each year because there's a big demand and there's just not enough reindeer," he said.
None of the reindeer is named Rudolph but they do each have a name. A deer with particularly big antlers is Dr. Ray.
"I've named some after the research people at the USDA. Dr. Ray right there he has done research with reindeer. He is a friend of mine in Ames, Iowa," Kyle explained.
He is pretty well-versed in all things reindeer.
He says in the spring the reindeer shed their coat and their antlers. In summer, they grow the first of three layers of fur.
"The first coat comes as a second coat and it's short dark brown. And the antlers grow and they're in velvet which is fuzzy and it's dark brown. so at that point you've got dark brown and dark brown and they don't look like Santa's reindeer," he said.
Their second coat is coming in now with a little more color and their antlers are in transition.
"The male reindeer have shed out their velvet. They scraped it off. The females have not yet and the babies have not yet," he said.
Their third coat won't show up until late fall, just in time for the holiday season.
