Can it be?

We have 3 doe fawns in our barn for bottle feeding. A few days ago we notice a few small pieces out of ones ear. We go in tonight and another one has a few pieces out of it's ear. I swear it looks like a mouse is gnawing on them. These are all sold to boot. We scoured the barn and permanently removed the raccoon we found. We sat out a boat load of mouse traps. I really wanna just get the fawns out but can't put them back in with mom after 2 weeks can I ???


 


To top it all off we watched our best yearling buck die after crashing the fence and breaking his neck :angry: when we went in the pen. We have are in with him daily and he comes within 10 ft  Not sure what happened. Just heard a crash and looked up and he was laying there

Oh and i sprayed their ears with anti bacterial spray (Blu-Kote) to deter the mice and keep ears from getting infected

I've learned anything is possible with deer. If your best buck is laying under a shady tree chewing his cud, he's really dreaming of a way to kill himself :blink: The doe will not take them back after this long. Sometimes when I have a doe abandon a fawn(usually yearlings), I just bottle feed the fawn in the pen with the doe and often she will figure it out in a day or so and start feeding it again. It happened to me twice so far this season. Sorry about your luck with the buck.  

I have always been convinced it would save time and money to just pick out the very best buck and doe fawn each year, dig a hole and just throw them in and cover them up. What looked to be my beat yearling has one antler jacked up also. Don't know for sure, but I think a paw to the head at the feeder is what happened.

LOL...i think you're both right...thanks for the laugh

Rick, I believe rats, mice, or chipmunks are a possibility. Any curious rodent could potentially bite. I seen a squirrel jumping around on top of one of my newborn fawns that are on the momma, luckily he left with out biting, I chased him off, but I think he was just trying to figure out what the fawn was.

As far as your yearling, that's terrible. I feel for you, but it happens to us all. Last spring I had a beautiful pied ( I didn't even intentionally breed for pied) that was out of my big breeder that was just starting his first year of growth last April and I get a call from my pap saying he found a dead deer in my pen in the one corner. I was working out of town. I didn't even ask him which one died, I knew it had to be that stinking awesome pied. Sure enough he said, sorry Matt, it was that half white one. He was working on his cow fence and spooked the herd of buck fawns and the pied slammed the corner and another one died a week later. Then they spooked again 2 weeks later from a dog and 3 of the remaining 7 destroyed one or both antlers.

It always seems like it's our best ones. Last yr i lost 3 to ehd... my best...2nd best..then 3rd best...it's just unexpected right now. sucks....i'm agreeing with roger up above...just gonna dig a hole and go ahead and put my best buck and doe fawn in now to just get it over with. It's crazy...and we ENJOY farming lol...are we nuts?


 


Hopefully the mice will all be gone in the morning. Barn is loaded with traps...decon and guns... We'll be out there all night shooting rodents h34r:

If I say that is the deer I like the best this year nine out of ten time it will be the dead one in the morning.  After thirty years I have no favorites or at least I don't mention it anymore.  LOL  Had a Fear Factor buck fawn I told my son I really liked him sure enough he was in the corner with a broke neck the next morning.


I haven't said a thing about my white or pied mule deer cause I know what happens if I do.

Jack...i was sitting here on my laptop and looked at my desk top picture...it was him...last yr i had my breeder as my pic and he died from ehd....i was looking for my next best to put a pic up and it hit me...my computer desk top is blank lol...no deer pics..maybe i should put a pic of a midge on it