WELLSVILLE — Families crowded into Utah State University’s Animal, Dairy and Veterinary Sciences facilities this week for the annual Reindeer Express, a long-running community event that brings Santa’s reindeer, student veterinarians and local farm animals together ahead of Christmas Eve.
The tradition, launched by USU’s School of Veterinary Medicine, gives students a chance to share what they are learning while performing health checks on Santa’s reindeer. Associate Department Head Karl Hoopes said the program also strengthens ties between the university and the Cache Valley community.
“We’ve been doing this for, this is probably our seventh year of doing it,” Hoopes said. “It was used to allow our students to share with the community the things that they’re learning about these animals. It was also an opportunity to get our reindeer here and give them a veterinary check so that they’d be ready to fly by Christmas Eve.”
Despite rainy weather, Hoopes said turnout remained strong. Community members also contributed animals for the event — including a Highland calf, a camel and donkeys — and provided cookies, along with milk from Gosner Foods.
“Our clubs get to come and show off,” he said. “They get to share with the community what they do and they get to help out, and the kids are why we do it.”
USU Extension veterinarian Chloe Stenkamp-Strahm took part in the reindeer examinations, including Prancer’s pre-flight check.
“We just examined Prancer and it turns out that her heart and lungs sounded good,” Stenkamp-Strahm said. “Her coat looked good. She looked nice and strong. So we determined that she’s perfectly healthy and ready to fly with Santa.”
Stenkamp-Strahm said Prancer is a young reindeer and will experience her first magical flight this Christmas Eve. Ensuring the animals are healthy is a responsibility she takes seriously.
“If Christmas Eve doesn’t go well with the reindeer, then there’s going to be a lot of kids out there that are quite sad,” she said. “So making sure that the reindeer are really, really healthy is an important job that I take very seriously.”
She called the Reindeer Express “a wonderful event” that brings families together and said more inspections are planned at Kaysville, where additional reindeer will receive their pre-Christmas evaluations.
“Oh, people should be so excited for Kaysville because at that event we’re going to inspect more of Santa’s reindeer,” she said.