Hair loss in a buck after the rut?

I have herd of hair loss in doe and fawns but never in a buck. Right after the rut I noticed he had a football sized bald patch on his rump, the skin looked healthy, no scabs or sores. At first I thought that since we had our first cold snap in the weather that maybe when he was laying down some of his fur had stuck to the ground when he got up and was pulled out. But his bald spot remained and grew in size, spreading from his rump to lower stomach on both sides.

He was in a pen with a few doe to breed them and is still there.

I have a hunch that when he used his antlers to itch himself that he was breaking the hair. My dad had suggested that maybe the drop in hormones contributed to it. His hair started growing back in January.

I am attaching two pictures, the one where he is broadside is when the hair had just started to grow back. The other was taken on Tuesday.



I am pretty puzzled on this!

My guess, It is not falling out, It is being pulled out by either himself, or the does that are in with him are pulling it out. I don't understand why deer do this to each other, its frustrating because it makes the victims appear ugly and/or sick. I had two does that, for two years in a row, would pick on every deer in the pen, they had every deer in their pen going bald, even the does that did the hair pulling pulled each others out, it was out of control. I did the only thing I could think to do, I shot both of them and ate them. This year there is no bald deer. They all have hair and are looking good.

please don't take that wrong, I am not suggesting you kill your deer, I only shot mine because I absolutely could not tolerate them doing that to the whole herd for another year, and because they were 2 older does that never gave me a buck fawn in the last three years, they had twin doe fawns every year. They were not profitable does for me to continue raising.

If you watch closely you will catch who's doing it, and you can try and separate that deer. It seems once they do it once, they never stop, unless you bring in a new doe that takes over as dominate doe of the pen and does not put up with it. That has been my expirence

Antlershed said:

My guess, It is not falling out, It is being pulled out by either himself, or the does that are in with him are pulling it out. I don't understand why deer do this to each other, its frustrating because it makes the victims appear ugly and/or sick. I had two does that, for two years in a row, would pick on every deer in the pen, they had every deer in their pen going bald, even the does that did the hair pulling pulled each others out, it was out of control.

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I think your spot on with this. Its a habitat they seem to form out of dominance or stress. Its a pain...

Do they have alfalfa or something to chew on?

@AntlerShed, thank you for your input! The doe are pretty timid around him, so he's probably doing it to himself. I'm up in the pens a lot just to watch them (I have no life) and the girls steer clear of him. You're right, it's very frustrating!



@Wild Rivers, They do have hay and I give them corn and soy bean in the morning. The neighbor bought a mineral block for the deer and that is in the pen too.



I'm trying to think of what might be stressing him out. I'll be keeping a close eye in case this is a dominance problem. My concern is that when he put him into the buck fawn pen that the habit will spread.

our fawns seem to do it the worst. I dont know if its boredom or its a dominance thing. It doesnt seem that the older ones do it as bad. I see them reach over and pull out hair off of another one but its just like they are taking a bite of hay and then go about their business.

other causes could be nutritional or ehd. We have a doe fawn that survived, she got it late October and about December we noticed her hair thinning. We had been keeping and eye on her for fear of the cold weather. Well we had to move her last week where she could go in the barn because the others were picking on her and kept pulling hair. She started to lose some weight and was limping because she is going to shed her hooves from the ehd. We put her in a pen with 2 other fawns and she is much happier.

When I went up to the pens today I noticed that my bottle fed doe fawn, #01, started to look patchy. Sure enough when I went to check her out she had a lot of little bald patches all over.

We have three doe fawns, two of them are twins that we purchased and have a huge build. The third fawn, #01, is a small (overly spoiled) doe fawn. I watched one of the twin fawns yank hair out of #01 while I was up there too.



I started to search through the forums looking for different thread on hair loss and I found one that a member had the same problem in their doe and their hide was turning black. In the end they attributed it to a lack of minerals. As it happens, our buck now has black patches where we thought his hair was growing back! Fantastic! I though it may have been black hair but it's hard to tell. I attached a picture, what do you think? If not for another member having the same problem but in the summer, I would have attributed it to possible frost bite.



We currently feed Record Rack Sportsman because that's the only one that Tractor Supply carries. Do you think it is lacking something essential? I have been comparing it to other feeds but I don't know what I'm looking for!