Dan O.

Does anyone else find that the does and fawns keep a very low profile through April, May and into June. I' m finding plenty of doe and fawn prints but they' re not actively feeding in the clover fields at this point. How long do does nurse their young before they put on totally solid food?

Dan O.

Russ otten

I think you can figure about 6-8 weeks. I' m going by the fact that goats will not let the young nurse after 8 weeks. And I fugure that goats may be one of the closer animals to deer. The four to six week period may be when the doe will start to get them to start grazing.
Dan, most of the posts have the opinion that deer won' t touch Rape until a frost. I planted some Rape around the edge of my newest Clover plot, checked today and it is all gone, 1 inch stubs. It was 8-10 inches tall. Got a strip 100 feet by 5 feet along my South fenceline. Put it in later, but I better check it out.
Russ

farm hunter

Hi Dan,

Yep - I haven' t hardly seen a deer in 2-3 weeks.

I always know when the fawns a dropping, beacuse the deer just disappear, this year seams no different. Right now, our deer won' t be anywhere near a field of clover, etc, at least not the does w/ fawns. Weeds/Forbs are everywhere, and most deer, not just does w/fawns, are eating them as the main source of food.

About the end of June, I start to see the mother does out in the fields without their fawns (their hidden in the brush still) feeding. About the end of July, I start to see Fawns feeding w/ mom. (these are just my rules of thumb). By the end of August, Does are weening them off milk, you' ll see them running from them, and sometimes chasing them.

PILOT

I was actually seeing alot of deer activity about a week ago. Most of the does I was seeing looked like they were about ready to bust, but they were still with their yearlings. This week Ive seen alot of yearlings wandering around because momma has givin them the boot. Also seen 4 young bucks together last night. They all had 3-4" stubs growing out and looked very thin and lanky looking. Two of the bucks were much taller than the other two, so Id assume that the smaller ones were just a year old the others were maybe 2 or just bigger yearlings. Its amazing how different they look later in the year when fall rolls around.

Dan O.

Thanks guys. Farm Hunter; we appear to be on about the same schedule except that I' ll start seeing the fawns on a regular basis at the end of June. Maybe that' s due to the layout of my property. It' s nice to know that ours are seeing the same type of cycles that I' m finding.

Dan O.