Jared I don't beleive it will work for you........to get the bottlrefed fawns to tame up you need to keep them in a really small pen for about ten to 14 days depending on the fawn.....the reason for this is that is roughly how long it takes for them to say ok your my new mommy and start coming to you........I don'y see how your fawns would ever tame down under the partime schedule.......just an opinion....hey if you find out how to do it let me know I'll jump all over that! Good Luck Jared!
Bottle feeding
- Thread starter Porterwhitetail
- Start date
Joined Apr 2009
624 Posts | 0+
*******, PA
My main concern is if I can get them to drink from time to time do you think the mix of cow milk and deer milk will be bad for them?
No I don't think it will harm them at all....if the cow milk harms them I'm in lots of trouble.......and i really don't see mixing them as being any problem.....just my opinion!!
I think it depends on how tame, or not, your doe are. If they are not tame, you might risk them abandoning the fawn, because you have spent too much time handling it, and you need to consider the amount of stress on the doe and fawn if you are in there messing with it part time. If your doe are fairly tame, just spend lots and lots of time in the pen, giving treats. Fawns mimick mom. If she is tame and comes towards you (or at least doesn't flee) when you enter the pen, so will the babies. Fawns I let the doe raise last year will eat out of my hand now because I spend tons of time in the pen all year long, especially after weaning. Then they look for me to come and put treats in the trough and they gradually get tamer and tamer.
As for pasturized milk, yes there is risk with unpasturized, but the pasturizing process takes out all of the things that makes using natural, goat or cow, milk so great. I think if you are going to use pasturized milk, you need to ad probiotics and mineral supplements to make up for what was removed during pasturization. I use only unpasturized goat milk, and have had great success with it. My supplier runs a very clean farm and her goats are current on all vaccinations, so the passive immunities are in the milk for the fawns. I know the vet she uses, so I am confident her herd is clean and healthy. I am lucky in that sense, so if you don't feel you have that confidence in your fresh milk supplier, I wouldn't risk it, either. But I would add supplements to make up the difference. Whole milk from the grocery store (is that what you call red cap?) doesn't have half the butter fat content that unpasturized goat milk does, and has none of the good bugs and bacterias that establish pH and good gut function.
Just my $.02 - good luck to everyone this fawning season!
As for pasturized milk, yes there is risk with unpasturized, but the pasturizing process takes out all of the things that makes using natural, goat or cow, milk so great. I think if you are going to use pasturized milk, you need to ad probiotics and mineral supplements to make up for what was removed during pasturization. I use only unpasturized goat milk, and have had great success with it. My supplier runs a very clean farm and her goats are current on all vaccinations, so the passive immunities are in the milk for the fawns. I know the vet she uses, so I am confident her herd is clean and healthy. I am lucky in that sense, so if you don't feel you have that confidence in your fresh milk supplier, I wouldn't risk it, either. But I would add supplements to make up the difference. Whole milk from the grocery store (is that what you call red cap?) doesn't have half the butter fat content that unpasturized goat milk does, and has none of the good bugs and bacterias that establish pH and good gut function.
Just my $.02 - good luck to everyone this fawning season!
do you heat the red cap milk up? if so how? how would you add probiotics and any thing else you think should be in there?
Robbie brings up some awesome points and that is one of my concerns as far as using the pasturized milk....i guess it's all in what you are willing to gamble.....my dairy farmer friend keeps a clean operation but I still feel uncomfortable with the fact that all it takes is one sick animal and it can be transmitted to all of your fawns.....I'm going to talk with the other Dairy farm where i plan on getting the red cap milk and see if there are things i can add back to the milk that might get stripped out during the pasturization process......we will see what happens.............Steve i heat my bottles up by placing them all in a tub of hot water........heat them up wo warm.......most of the probiotica and stuff you can get in a powder and therefore are easy to mix into your milk.
Joined Apr 2009
810 Posts | 0+
Burlington, West Virginia
Steve, we put the ammoumt of red cap milk, mixed with 1/5 the ammount of sav-a-kid replacer that the bag instructions call for when mixing with water ,into a container needed for a feeding. For every 6oz of milk we add the following, 1tsp pure pumpkin, 1tsp plain yogart, and 1 scoop (included in can) Goats Prefer Probiotic Powder. Stir, stir, stir with a wire wisk. Place the milk into the bottles and put into a hot water bath until it is good and warm when placed on your wrist. Like testing a babies milk. I think the main ingredient is to keep the bottles, nipples, and all tools CLEAN , CLEAN , CLEAN. We use hot soapy bleach water, and rinse well after each feeding. I came up with this combination after asking numerous questions, and spending hours searching deer farmer forums. It has worked well for us,with no scours and good sized fawns at weaning time. I hope this helps in some way. Good Luck this season. Allen
After about 4 days you won't be able to get close to fawn if left on mother even if mother is tame. If mother is tame and you spend lots of time in pen eventually fawns will tame down a bit as Robbie stated.
Joined Apr 2009
1,231 Posts | 0+
PA
You will not get many doe that will let that happen...
We have Two doe that will do that... but you need to get them with her alot more...as often as they need...Because they need to nurse throughout the day because the doe can't produce the large amount of milk at once...
We did it to get the more natural milk in them.
The best thing we decided was she would clean them...So we ended up feeding them as she cleaned them.
We have Two doe that will do that... but you need to get them with her alot more...as often as they need...Because they need to nurse throughout the day because the doe can't produce the large amount of milk at once...
We did it to get the more natural milk in them.
The best thing we decided was she would clean them...So we ended up feeding them as she cleaned them.
Joined Apr 2009
1,231 Posts | 0+
PA
Also some fawn get to confused to take the mom back ...the nipple must be alot different.It's not an easy thing to try.
I tried this little experiment last year. I had one of the tamest does you will ever find. When she fawned I spend tons of time handling the fawns she had. She was fine with it and would actually follow me to the fawn to see what I was doing. After I left she would go check the fawn. A mother deer has it built in that you do not play with the baby. That is nature. Mom feeds the fawn and stimulates fawn to relieve itself. After that its done. You cannot compete with that. The fawn will more than likely reject your attempts to feed it. It has had the real thing. If you have bottle fed you know how hard it is to get the fawn on the bottle sometimes without mommas influence around. With momma feeding the fawn naturally you will have a tough time even trying to get the fawn to take from you. What you may end up with is a wild fawn that sees you as something that was trying to force things on it while it was young. If you have the time you may get to tame it down by petting it alot. I would suggest that you use a scent or bacterial killer that is safe if you do alot of handling the fawn. What I ended up with was a fawn that was worse than my mother raised, no human influence, fawns. The mother raised fawn were put in with my bottle fed tame fawns and eventually ended up being 5 footers. The mother raised fawn that had human influence ended up being wild and wouldn't take to people at all. This was just my experiment that went wrong. I think the fawn ended up being the worst attitude wise that I have ever had here. My deer are all very calm and most VERY tame. This 1 doe fawn was the exception to all of my deer.
T.R.O can attest to our deer on our farm. He now owns this mother and her fawn.
T.R.O can attest to our deer on our farm. He now owns this mother and her fawn.
Ya I know there is alot of mud in the pictures above. We were moving the deer out of the muddy pens that day because of 2 inches of rain over the previous 24 hours.
That doe in the top picture is the coolest and most calm doe I have ever bought! You can go anywhere and do anything you want and she just stands by your side. Shes not the only tame deer off his farm though. When we pulled our new Tundra and deer trailor into his pen to load up the deer he has some very tame button bucks as well that liked chewing on the trailor wires. They were obsessed with the new "toy" in the pen. We had 3 guys darting and dragging while another guy had to do laps around the truck chasing the deer off of it. haha. Tamed is the way to go if you want to be close and pet them but when it comes time to moving them into another pen or push them somewhere, goodluck!! When the deer arent scared of you and wont run off to where you want them to go it can get very aggravating. But I would much rather have too tame than fence bangers. Bottle feeding is fun the first couple times and then its a chore trying to make them understand that your the new mom. Theres a 2 week span where its a pain but once they learn and as soon as they see you and come running to feed its back fun again. How many people bottle feed just long enough to let them make it on there own and who bottle feeds until they lose their spots. I know people that do both and they are definitely more tame the longer you bottle feed but its alot more work and too tamed isnt always the best thing when it comes to chute systems and crowding them.
Brad calls it "herding cats" - but I'm with you, I'll take it over fence bangers ANY day!
I bottle feed for about 90 days, +/- 10. Some fawns start to wean themselves around 80 days, so I let them. Others, I start to cut back at 90 days and have them completely weaned by 100 days. They are usually the ones that want in your pocket all the time. The ones that self wean are more independent and adjust to being moved, etc. better, in my experience.
I bottle feed for about 90 days, +/- 10. Some fawns start to wean themselves around 80 days, so I let them. Others, I start to cut back at 90 days and have them completely weaned by 100 days. They are usually the ones that want in your pocket all the time. The ones that self wean are more independent and adjust to being moved, etc. better, in my experience.
We are just getting into deer farming & we have 2 does that will be fawning the end of May. It is nice to be able to go to this website & read all of your postings regarding raising fawn & the do's & don'ts.
T.R.O.
What we have done with our deer that are tame is get them used to treats. When we want them in another pen we go to the pen and shake the bag of mini marshmallows, They come running into the pen. Lucy was tamed that way. We try to give them treats and lead them around 2-3 times a week and they love it. Although everyone knows that you MUST take precautions when dealing with tame bucks. The only injury I have ever recieved from all the deer I work with was from one of our breeders that was not tame.
What we have done with our deer that are tame is get them used to treats. When we want them in another pen we go to the pen and shake the bag of mini marshmallows, They come running into the pen. Lucy was tamed that way. We try to give them treats and lead them around 2-3 times a week and they love it. Although everyone knows that you MUST take precautions when dealing with tame bucks. The only injury I have ever recieved from all the deer I work with was from one of our breeders that was not tame.
I understand that!! The only problem we have is we bought several deer last year and each farm had there own little treats! When we try doing that we have peanuts animal crackers and marshmallows. some deer wont touch what some of the other ones love!! I dont know why. Its like they are afraid to try it. We bought 100 lbs of peanuts in bulk thinking that we would break all of our deer into those as their treats well we are stuck iwth about 99 pounds left and not a single deer will touch them. Dont know why. Anyone wanting some unsalted roasted peanuts let me know!
TRO,
They may not want them because theyre roasted. Our deer love peanuts but wont touch one that comes out of a plastic bag.... As for bottleraising, we did 12 last year on goats milk mixed with milk replacer, one gallon goats milk mixed with a gallon of zoologic then fix the bottles. We did 8 on whole milk mixed with zoologic the same way and had no difference in weaning weight but a big difference on the pocket book as we were paying $8 a gallon for the goats milk. We also fed a fawn pellet that had milk replacer in it. We'll know for sure in a few months but it looks like most of both groups got bred as fawns before Jan 15. In my opinion that says the were pretty healthy when they weaned.
They may not want them because theyre roasted. Our deer love peanuts but wont touch one that comes out of a plastic bag.... As for bottleraising, we did 12 last year on goats milk mixed with milk replacer, one gallon goats milk mixed with a gallon of zoologic then fix the bottles. We did 8 on whole milk mixed with zoologic the same way and had no difference in weaning weight but a big difference on the pocket book as we were paying $8 a gallon for the goats milk. We also fed a fawn pellet that had milk replacer in it. We'll know for sure in a few months but it looks like most of both groups got bred as fawns before Jan 15. In my opinion that says the were pretty healthy when they weaned.
Steven,
I dont know why they didnt like them. We were buying the little bags from walmart and where ever that would only last 2 days because they were so small but since we were going through so many we decided to buy in bulk through a farm supply store and they taste the same to me. look the same and everything. I just know that its gonna be a few years before I finish off 2 50lb burlap bags of peanuts taking a handful at a time!!
I dont know why they didnt like them. We were buying the little bags from walmart and where ever that would only last 2 days because they were so small but since we were going through so many we decided to buy in bulk through a farm supply store and they taste the same to me. look the same and everything. I just know that its gonna be a few years before I finish off 2 50lb burlap bags of peanuts taking a handful at a time!!