Other than the obvious (bottle feeding and an immense amount of time spent around your deer), the best way into a deer's heart after the bottle feeding is over is still through their stomach. I want to share this with everybody for 2 reasons: 1- Because this forum is responsible for deer standing in my pen right now that otherwise would have died w/o your help, and 2- Because it works/helps. What we do: Whether bottle fed or mother fed, we introduce them to bread and crackers early on. They will typically not take to it right away. There is a process: 1- smell and walk away 2- smell, lick, and walk away 3- smell, lick, mouth, spit out, and walk away 4- until finally one day they put it in their mouth for keeps. From that point on we try our best to give them these ''treats'' as often as we can. I referred to them as ''treats'' because I do not want to imply that in any way bread or crackers should supplement their regular feed. And yes ''early on'' is ideal, but adults of all ages can and do learn to love bread. So...here are some of the advantages to doing the aforementioned and/or what you can expect to accomplish through doing this: 1- Treating a deer with certain meds, ie. wormer and antibiotics (SMZ) are the meds we have administerd mostly in our bread, but there could certainly be more that one could hide in bread that are administerd orally. Because these meds carry a nasty flavor, this is where the crackers come in. For instance, I melt the SMZ tabs down with water, then smash the crackers up and mix them with the SMZ creating a texture of paste that is spreadable by adding just the right amount of water. Then spread this onto the bread, fold it over and go feed it. With wormer, simply apply your dose onto smashed up crackers and add water to acquire the spreadable texture, spread on a slice of bread, fold and feed. 2- I have got deer back into my pen that have gotten out before simply and solely because they were bread eaters. By ''frisbee-ing'' bread high into the air I got their attention, opened the gate and ''pied-pipered'' them right through the gate and into the pen. 3- If you want to see/show your deer, get a closer look at your velveted bucks, just frisbee some bread up in the air. In my pens it can look like Jurassic Park with all these animals running at you when they see the bread being tossed in the pen. 4- And hand feeding bread is a great way to maintain trust/tameness as well as acquire trust/tameness with any given deer. I have actually been able to 'pet' mother raised deer before, not any further down the body than the neck, but none the less, got my hands on them. 5- It can serve as a ''barometer'' to detect a sick deer. If a ''bread eater'' refuses bread, you can bet their is a problem. 6- And...it's just fun. It allows you to love and interact with your deer in ways and with frequency that might otherwise not be possible. Go to a bread store and you can often buy lots of out-dated bread very cheap. This whole feeding bread thing has sure served me well. Case in point: My first doe, who is now 15 years old, has only been knocked down one time in her entire life to be treated, and no I don't have a chute system. And she would not have been knocked down then if I would have been aware of Draxxin. Now if I think she needs a dose of Draxxin, I just walk up behind her with a syringe and and shove it in. Hope this helps someone or ''someones''. 
God Bless you all!
God Bless you all!
