New Willow reindeer park sells live animals ... a little reluctantly

WILLOW — The reindeer for sale along the Parks Highway isn't in the form of meat and sausages packaged in a cooler on the back of a truck.

No, the animals at Willow Reindeer Park are very much alive, twitching at bugs and scratching velvety antlers in a shady pen just off the summer-busy highway.

Seven domesticated caribou — two bulls, five cows — make up the herd at Alaska's newest reindeer-related attraction.

And yes, they're for sale.

The animals are found at the ramshackle park just off the highway that's advertised by hand-lettered signs and still being carved from the spruce forest. Visitors pull in to discover a vintage bicycle collection and an exceedingly friendly 1-year-old husky-border collie mix.

The reindeer are probably destined to be pets, not food.

"There's been some people asking about the price because they want them for meat," said Willow Reindeer Park owner Mike Grundberg. "When they realize they start at $2,500 and go up from there, it seems like a pretty expensive meat animal."

'Different kind of reindeer'

The admittedly low-budget attraction in Willow — Grundberg calls it "a bootstrap business on a shoestring budget" — joins just a handful of businesses around the state supplying a growing demand for reindeer.

Grundberg on Thursday brought out the most visible member of the herd: 2-year-old Rowdy, a bull often spotted walking on a leash at Willow events or running errands with his people.

"He loves going to the store or the post office," Grundberg said. "He's a different kind of reindeer."

Rowdy is the most sociable of the small herd, he said. The reindeer "kisses" people who offer graham crackers with their mouths. He allows complete strangers to caress his antlers.

Not all reindeer are so easy.

Tricky pet

Aficionados describe the animals as a rewarding but high-maintenance pet that craves the companionship of the herd.

The state's most famous reindeer farm, the one in Butte run by the Williams family, avoids selling single reindeer because they're such sociable animals.

The farm also takes care to vet buyers.

"Honestly, I'm paranoid about where my deer go just to make sure they're safe," said Denise Hardy, a Williams daughter who runs the farm. "A lot of people have really great ideas but they don't know anything about reindeer or even livestock. When I sell a deer, I really like to know that somebody has raised more than a few cats, dogs and bunnies."

The Williams farm is already sold out of reindeer this year after selling 20, Hardy said. She's glad someone else is supplying the growing demand for the animals, provided the reindeer are in good hands.

"If he's got some for sale, that's wonderful," she said, of the Willow park. "I just hope he'll pay attention to who they're going to and not just sell them to the first person."

Buyer beware

Reindeer eat the kind of browse that's ubiquitous in Southcentral and the Interior: willow, alder, grasses. But they need a special diet such as reindeer pellets in addition to local vegetation to ensure a healthy diet, said state veterinarian Robert Gerlach.

The more they're handled, generally, the tamer reindeer get, Gerlach said. Still, owners and visitors need to be wary of antlers.

"They may be good pets but they then have this appendage that pokes people and can cause some injuries," he said.

A federal law, the Reindeer Act of 1937, bars anyone besides Alaska Native people from owning Alaska reindeer, according to Gerlach.

A handful of people in Southcentral and the Interior sell reindeer as pets or for meat but those animals came from Canada or elsewhere, he said.

The Willow reindeer are not Alaska animals but instead come originally from the Williams farm, Grundberg said. The animals are four years into a five-year program to get them certified as free of chronic wasting disease, he said. The disease produces lesions in the brains of infected animals.

People bringing reindeer into Alaska must have them certified as low risk for chronic wasting disease, Gerlach said. The state also works with reindeer producers to test animals taken to slaughter or in herds for brucellosis or tuberculosis.

Anyone buying a reindeer should apply for a state permit to make sure they're disease-free, says Sabrieta Holland, a large-animal veterinarian based in the community of Butte near Palmer.

"You need to have proper fencing," Holland said. "If they get loose, they are quite well-adapted to Alaska conditions and they can easily exit."

Her son raised reindeer for 4-H, she said. "He stopped raising them because he grew to love them too much. We went and got a pair this spring that we can keep and not have to go to slaughter."

Newcomer

The Willow reindeer farm opened just this month.

Grundberg and business partner Neil Buntyn moved the business from Big Lake last year. Buntyn, who favors reindeer sales for meat or qualifying them for export, is out of the country.

Grundberg, a 53-year-old originally from Minnesota, spent 24 years in the village of Anvik before taking a city job in Anchorage as a grant writer with the Yukon River Inter-Tribal Watershed Council.

The park also offers a "petting zoo" for admission ($5 for children, $10 for adults; very young children, veterans and seniors get in free) gets visits from five to 10 carloads of people a day, Grundberg guessed.

He said anyone wanting to buy reindeer should have land and an enclosure, and the ability to do daily care.

Most of the serious interested buyers already have reindeer herds, he said, but the farm did sell a calf to a family up the Hatcher Pass road that don't have other reindeer. They do have 19 small dogs and a St. Bernard puppy.

Grundberg said he'd rather not sell the reindeer, which he likes to call "exhibition animals," but business is business and capital is scarce.

"Our reindeer, I consider them pets," he said.