Average survival and fawning ratios

I would say in the first full year of life for a fawn, the mortality rate is easily 10%. There may be years you lose only 3-4%, but there will also be years you may lose up to 20%, weather is a huge factor for newborns.

I seldom have a single, almost every doe over 1 year will have twins, actually in my expierence, a mature doe is just as likely to have triplets as they would to have a single. The conception rate for does being live bred has always been 100% for me (6-10 bred every year)

I hope others will help you out with their numbers too, this will be interesting to see different farm stats.

Ed, I have had about 100 fawns a year and have had about 96% some years and 70% was my worst year. Like was said above weather plays a huge factor in the fawns surival. Most of us lack good brush cover when weather is bad. All in all I would say deer farmers have a better record for fawn surival than many places in the wild.



For instance the elk herd in Yellowstone now has one out of 100 elk calves surving in some areas their first year of life. In this case predation is the cause. Wolves and bears have figured out birthing areas and kill most of the calves. Sad but true as those are DNR findings. They started with 32000 elk in this area and now have only 5000 head since the introduction of wolves. Any fool can see with a 1% survial rate the elk will be gone from those areas but then the wolves will move on to better hunting grounds which more than likely will be cattle ranchers.



I kinda figure a game farm doe will average 1 and 1/2 fawns per year at least that has been my averages.

Don't be fooled by the lack of people stating mortality data. Fact is, like any livestock operation, some of the animals don't make it. You will loose adult animals and progeny each year. Is there a number that is average??? I doubt it but if I were to guess at a number it would be a 2-4% loss. Having said that, I also need to tell you the ones that won't make it will be your best does, biggest fawns, and best bucks (Murphy's Law). Death losses are part of any livestock operation and when you are raising unpredictable and spooky animals, there are a million ways for them to die. I have a friend that swears when 2 or more deer are lying together in the pen or pasture, the deer are plotting a new way to commit suicide! Remember this, if the death losses were too great, this forum would not be here.

I agree with Scott, pretty tough to put a number to a %. So many variables, those that are in our control i.e. how long have deer been in your pen, deer density, pen maintenance, feed, one's regiment and timing of preventative medicine, etc, as well as the weather, which is out of our control, other than our reaction to it. Which is another huge variable to all the aforementioned variables - our reaction. I'm sure we are all in agreement that if we knew ''then'' what we know now, we'd all had more deer live.

My number, if I had to pick one in fawn loss, would be 5 to 10%, yet one year it was near 20% maybe 25.

Adult loss per year is around 5%, some years a tad more.

And yes, Murphy's Law, for sure and for certain, in my herd anyway. When I lose a deer, it will almost without exception be in the top 10% of the heard, and in fact all too often the top 2%.

And I would say that 90% or more of the mature does will have 2 or more fawns.

Food for thought.......When estimating annual herd proliforation in our large (500+ acre enclosures), we use 1.36 fawns per doe as the birth rate, unless we see a factor that will contribute to a change either positive or negative such as weather, disease, crop density, predation etc. Our life cycle analysis indicate the mortality rate to vary with these factors as well.