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Post by hmoosek on Aug 3, 2022 21:28:31 GMT -6
I just saw this thread. What a wonderful story!
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Post by woodeye on Aug 3, 2022 22:01:30 GMT -6
That's cool how the young deer were taught their paths in life. But it also explains why I find tiny deer tracks in my garden. School has started...
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Post by rdback on Aug 4, 2022 9:32:17 GMT -6
heavyhitterokra Yay! We've finally got to see the babies...well, at least one of them lol. I noticed in the second-to-last picture Stanley looks to have something going on between her ears. Anything to worry about?
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Post by heavyhitterokra on Aug 4, 2022 12:58:47 GMT -6
rdback,
That spot on Stanley's head is where ticks have chewed a bare place between her ears. She catches thousands of ticks each season. You wouldn't believe the number of ticks we pull off of her. She'll let me pull ticks off her ears, but those around her eyes and on top of her head are another story. I've tried everything I can think of to keep them off, but she can smell any kind of medicine or tick poison before I get anywhere close and she takes off on me.
When she was a baby, we used to keep Vaseline on her ears and on her head, but she hates that and won't let me do it anymore. I have managed to sneak a handful of Sevin dust up there from time to time, but you really have to get her distracted to be able to get any of that on her. We used to tie tick tags for cattle on her collar, but we stopped doing that while she is still nursing. Getting a tick tag around her neck is kind of tough to do too. We can't put any kind of collar on her that she can't break, because deer jump through too many barbed wire fences. A solid collar might cause her to get killed, so we tie break away collars on her. She manages to break one of those about a dozen times per year, then there goes another tick tag too.
She got really sick with diarrhea about a year ago and I tried to give her an injection. She wasn't gonna have any part of that! I bent about 3 needles and stopped trying to doctor her. I did finally get her to eat a few supplements in her feed, but that took days. She could smell the powders and would turn her nose up at any kind of feed.
It's kind of tough to do veterinary-type things on a wild animal.
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Post by heavyhitterokra on Sept 6, 2022 18:52:28 GMT -6
Stanley came back by to see us again today; she took about a week-long hiatus. That always worries us because she had been coming by every evening like clockwork ever since she had the twins. I was beginning to wonder if she had decided to run with the bucks again. Last year, she disappeared in October and we never saw her again until May. We had just about given her up for dead.
This evening, I was taking a walk out by the garden and she spotted me, then came running up to love on me, so I brought her home to see my wife. It was another happy reunion. We ran some cool water in the kiddie pool for her to drink and stayed out there, feeding her crunchy Cheetos and Jolly Rancher Cinnamon candy until dark.
Remember that sore spot that was on top of her head, back in August, from the ticks biting her so much? It has since then healed up. For some reason, the ticks have been giving her a reprieve. There for a while, we were picking a hundred or so of them every day. They just wouldn't leave her alone. (It's my theory, that they are breeding when they congregate in such masses the way they were doing). Mostly, what makes me think that is that they seem to just pick one spot and go there en masse. If I was an entomologist, I'd dedicate my life to study what that pheromone was and use it to trap them. Right now, the tiny seed ticks are hatching out everywhere, so I suppose the ticks that were congregating earlier have probably fallen off, laid their eggs and died?It's hard to believe that it's already late enough in the year that her Summer fur is falling out to be replaced by her Winter coat. The gray-colored fur is her Winter coat coming in. It's hollow, thicker, and downy to keep her warm. She is two years and four months old and you can still see tiny spots along both sides of her spine when she changes coats. They are not visible in the Summer or in Winter. They can only be seen when her hair is shedding off between coats. She is shedding her red, Summer hair like crazy right now. She is finally beginning to fill in really nicely. Earlier in the year, her babies were keeping her sucked down until you could count her ribs. I'm glad to see they've finally been weaned. She's not camera shy, that's for certain. Too bad her babies are so wild. I've never gotten a decent photo of the two of them together yet.
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Post by heavyhitterokra on Sept 16, 2022 15:25:58 GMT -6
Finally ... Some baby pictures!
(You'll have to zoom in to see these). It's almost like playing "Where's Waldo". They're in there, I promise. This is about as close as I've ever gotten to the babies. They are wilder than a March hair. (It doesn't help that my 'shadow' is always a big, goofy German Shepherd trying to guess where my next step will be).
He's always on the lookout, but he won't hurt them. He and their mama play tag just about every day.
Here they are, just before they scampered off into the thickest of the woods, where I'll never go during seed tick season.
If you look closely, you can see all three of them milling around out there.
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Post by woodeye on Sept 16, 2022 15:52:58 GMT -6
Yay! Glad you got candid shots of the babies. Their mama has been taking good care of them.
Now you'll have to name them though...
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Post by chrysanthemum on Sept 16, 2022 21:12:15 GMT -6
Thanks for the photos. It’s hard to believe those two are Stanley’s fawns. They’re so big.
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Post by heavyhitterokra on Sept 16, 2022 21:39:31 GMT -6
I know. That's crazy how fast they've grown. They barely have any spots left on them. I've more than once mistaken them for a pair of full-grown does wandering through, only to see Stanley running with them, then call her to me and realize they had just grown that much.
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Post by heavyhitterokra on Sept 21, 2022 19:50:52 GMT -6
I have an unfathomable number of deer tracks in my garden this evening! I went for a walk, right at dusk and saw a doe with her two fawns go scampering off before I got more than a hundred yards into our backyard. Then, as I got closer to the garden, I counted twelve deer jumping through my electric fence. Then, I saw Stanley and her two fawns off to one side, looking very bewildered at what all the fuss was about. All in all, I counted 18 deer.
When Stanley saw me, she ran straight to me, like she was trying to say, "Help! Something's out there! Run for cover!" It was pretty amusing to see her running right toward me, while all of the others were running away, but once I got to the garden, the amusing part was pretty much over. There were easily over a thousand deer tracks, just along one row. I priced materials today to build a new 8' foot fence all the way around. Parts alone are going to be $1,358.00 then, there's the labor, which will all be my own.Thousands upon thousands of deer tracks in my garden! Thousands upon thousands of persimmons during a drought is probably what brings them here. Who knows how many times I've had someone tell me, "Tie a dog up out there. That'll keep 'em away!" Not! This deer spends about as much time chasing dogs as dogs spend chasing her.
This is Stanley, chasing off a full grown German Shepherd. Dogs are no match for an angry deer's front hooves. I've seen her whip a bulldog before.
One dog doesn't stand a chance against Stanley. She's as fast as Jackie Chan. No way would I ever tie a dog up in a garden. The deer would make mince meat out of him in no time.
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Post by chrysanthemum on Sept 21, 2022 20:48:39 GMT -6
There have been dogs seriously injured and even killed in our neighborhood by bucks goring them. Deer can be very dangerous. (They’re dangerous in different way, too, of course. I had seven run straight in front of my car tonight, but thankfully I saw them by the road in the distance and had already slowed down before they made their move.)
I’m sorry that your having so much trouble with those deer, and the materials cost and labor involved in deer fencing are pretty overwhelming to think about. If you can afford the materials, though, it would probably be a worthwhile winter project. I wonder what the value in seed is that they’ve eaten this year, plus the cost of the plastic mulch and drip line you ran, as well as the gasoline for the tractor. When you start considering what a fence could save you in future years, it helps put the pricing in perspective, but prices are still just crazy this year, and I’m not sure it’s going to stop.
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Post by woodeye on Sept 21, 2022 21:57:54 GMT -6
Thanks for the photos, heavyhitterokra. That's horrible, the first photo is the exact reason I'm either going to build an 8 foot enclosure, or forget gardening altogether and do something else. I agree with chrysanthemum, as hard as it is to absorb the cost of the fencing, at least you know what the fencing is going to cost.
Fence to prevent deer: $1,358.00 Deer with no fence: $$$$$$$$ Perpetual
Oh that Stanley!
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Post by heavyhitterokra on Sept 22, 2022 10:09:11 GMT -6
Agreed, the cost of upgrading the fence to 8' feet small mesh all around would be made up in one season or less. I just need to get the money going to get it done. Traditional banks won't loan money to build fence and the loan officer at the Farm Service Agency is out of the office until sometime in October.
I'm pretty sure I can secure a loan from the FSA, but I sure would like to be building the fence or at least gathering materials to build the fence while I'm waiting.
Last year, I took OSU's advice and built a single-strand electric fence at the deer's eye level, with peanut butter-baited strips tied at 3' foot intervals. That worked wonderfully! (For about year)... The deer went for the bait, the deer were zapped by the bait. The deer would not go near the bait, for about a year.
Then, one day, out of the blue, someone in the group discovered they all had wings and they decided to migrate over the fence en masse. Monkey see monkey do, and before you could say, "Jack be nimble" they were holding nightly high jump competitions with free drinks from the irrigation line, door prizes of okra Flambé, unlimited visits to the gravel bar, dance marathons, and candlelight dinners, courtesy of the grasshoppers who inadvertently climbed into the electric fence charger.
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Post by woodeye on Sept 22, 2022 10:59:45 GMT -6
heavyhitterokra , I understand the money situation completely. If not for the materials that I currently have access to, my enclosure would be put on hold for no telling how long.
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Post by heavyhitterokra on Oct 20, 2022 7:09:24 GMT -6
I asked Stanley this morning, "How much does it cost to fly Santa's sleigh?"
Her reply was, "About eight bucks ... Nine, if there'ss bad weather." Sometimes, it's hard to understand her when she's chewing corn.
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