I was just wondering how much time do you all think is neccesary to make a bottle fed really tame? We all know it takes only minutes for one of these little guys to suck down a bottle and to make them do their job, but as Curtis Loyd said on another post thats just part of the job. We have to make that fawn feel secure,safe,and bond with us. It was easy when you only had one or two to give them all the attetion they could want. Just curious some of you guys feeding a bunch of fawns at a time. Do you limit the number in there with you at a time? Do you try to give each fawn 4 or 5 minutes of personal grooming time? Whats your agenda when you bottle feed? Rick
Dc is on to something about the attention. My tamest doe fawn last year turned just a bit too wild when I put her in a pen with a buck fawn to keep him company. She was a follower and so she followed the buck every time he ran from me. I pulled her back into the doe pen in February and I just got to touch her for the first time in about 8 months. You have to keep the attention coming to keep them dog tame. I think important thing is find out what treat makes them go gaga!
I like to keep mine a little wild(5 to 10 footers). I go in feed them let the kids play for a few minutes and then leave. My first bottle feed doe was dog tame for the first 2 years. I would spend and hour or two with her every time i got a chance while bottle feeding. ( you can do that when you only have one aninal on the farm and its new to you!) When she grew and other does where introduced it was a pain to separate the does with her in there. All the others would run into the alleyway, and by the time i got her to go through all the others had went to the end and came back out. I literally had to get on my knees and push her through the tunnel system last fall to get the the CIDR put in. I quit petting her even when she would come up and nudge me. Now she is a 5 footer and will run if the other does do and i find it alot easier to handle the whole heard.
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If I know the doe is OK with me touching the fawn... I give shots and tag as soon as dry drink and walking good...I then go in several times a day pick the fawn up and rub it and talk to it nuzzle it...I try and get them used to my smell...(I should not say this because I am pulling Ai'ed Little Boomers as soon as I finish writing this.)..But my fawns normally take the bottle right away if they had already eaten if they have I wait awhile about 4 hours and they take it I have been lucky the hardest thing is teaching them to suck but after about a minute if you keep their neck stretched out right...They will suck easy...I feel I don't have a problem because they aren't afraid of me...My hardest ones to start are bucks because I don't handle them as muck so When I pull them I normally have a little fight with them but if you warm a cup of water in the micro wave and warm the nipple that will sometimes help also.I want my doe's tame and my buck not fence crashers...But it seems the buck tame easy even though I don't what them to.
DC thats basically what we are doing to get them good and tame. Bring them out one at a time baby them a little bit groom them a little let them run around playing coming back to you for some attention. Works great when your only feeding a half a dozen or so at a time. What I was curious about was those guys feeding 30 or more fawns. I wonder if ZZ fawns are all 5 to 10 footers that have been bottle fed or do they still try to tame them down where you feed them out of your hand. Just curious if bottle fed from a big operation might be a different deer than a bottle fed from a smaller operation.
Every year I try to keep our fawns as wild as possible yet there are always a few that insist on being tame. I agree that it depends on the deer's personality. A few years ago I released a fawn and one year later got a call that she was 45 miles away from where I released her and injured. I went to check it out and when I found her she followed me to my Pathfinder, jumped in and I took her home. Two weeks later when she was feeling better she jumped my fence and went on her way.
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Dennis is right on. They all have their own personality. Went to the pen tonight and got mauled by the old babies. Must have 250 head and they are all different. Some are 5 footers and some are in your pocket. Bucks tame easier and seem to stay tamer. You can spend the same amount of time with 10 of them and they will all be differnt. Can't see any difference from when I raised 20 or 150! ZZ
That's kinda what I was wondering. It more or less comes down to the deers temperment. I must say my hats off to you ZZ handleing that many hungry mouths at one time. Do I understand that you feed your buck fawns and doe fawns? Any problems with that many bucks with racks on later when you enter a pen? Man it would only take one. Rick
Buckskin said:
We spend as much time as possible with them. Ofcourse we have two young boys to help out which makes a big difference. All of our does with the exeption of the three foundation does are dog tame!
We always say wen the ones that want under the covers start pawing at the ones that are allready under the covers, it's time to go to the barn!!!!
The worst bottle fed buck we had would have to be 12 hours from the last feeding the begrudgeingly get close enough to suck on the end of the nipple, but he loved my wife and would run up to her and cuddle with her, "I am a confident heterosexual and was not threatened"(Dc was gonna ask)as he grew he warmed to me by summer as a yearling he would come to get his ears scratched and made sounds like he really, really, really, enjoyed it. His aggression started that fall he was in a pen next to the breeder buck and one day "Bobby"was pushing with his antlers on the fence near the breeder and wheezing , when "Lurch" hit the fence it was the first time that I had ever seen a deer fly backwards, lesson learned, he was no match for 350 lb Lurch, so one day a week later when he turned to me, one good whack and he new he was number three or lower. at age two same thing, used him for breeding and because of him aggression we cut his antlers, age three more of the same, calm as a kitten from Feb. to Sept. , during the rut I just stayed away from the breeding pen except to feed, mid Jan. back in the pen feeding... everything good, one day feeding don't realize that the bigger doe fawns in the next pen are starting to cycle, look up and have just enough time to swing feed pail between me and freight train, I was out for a second after my the back of my head hit the ground ( first time ever I flew backwards) now still holding and empty feed pail I used it to protect my head as "Bobby" tried to shove me into the ground with his sawed of antler nubs, Bobby was now 350 lb and I was no match for him I was trying to pull myself to the fence because there was no way he was going to let me get up, when our dog showed up and distracted him(Our house was a mile from our deer farm and she never usually followed me to the deer,) I was cut and scraped and black and blue and a really pretty shade of purple from my ankles to my shoulders.
You can do everything right and still fail dramatically, It has not happened since and as I am opposed to repeating histories failures, I guarantee it will never happen again.
You can do everything right and still fail dramatically, It has not happened since and as I am opposed to repeating histories failures, I guarantee it will never happen again.
Our rule is, if the bucks have hard horn nobody goes in the pen or sticks their hands through the fence. If it's an emergency i'm the only one that will go in the pen!!