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Fawn with Broken Jaw

J

Joe C

Joined Apr 2009
143 Posts | 0+
Cedar, MN
I walked into a pen Sunday morning and found something none of us like to find. The jaw was hanging down on this fawn about three inches from the tip of the nose. This doe fawn has been running around playing after it nurses from its mother every morning for the last two weeks. Hitting the fence and snapping her jaw bone has slowed her down for now. She will be four weeks old tomorrow.

I went back inside the house and brainstormed for a while. I had what they call stretchy gloves that are very much like elastic and look like they would only fit a four year old. I cut the fingers off the glove except for the middle finger. I cut slots to put the ears through and after putting it on the fawn I went to work and cut the thumb to length and put it around the snout of the fawn. I then tied the top part of the nose to the thumb part on the snout only so the bottom would have more support untied. These gloves when stretched breath very well.

I just watched her nurse for the first time in 30 hours. She probably didn't get much milk, but at least she is learning how to do it again after all that trauma. She is swollen and sore, but hopefully she will heal quickly and the pain will disappear soon for easier nursing. If this happens to you and you find the fawn quickly you may want to try this.
 

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Joe,

That looks like some o0f my contraptions. What the hey, if you hadn't tried you would have never known if it worked. I applaude your ingenuity and resolve.
 
Thanks everybody. That is a big complement coming from you Scott. I know through the years that you have had your challenges raising these things. When I am faced with a deer dilemma I just think of what Tim Condict said; "If the animal is going to die anyway I have nothing to lose. I might as well try something. If I kill it so be it, I know that if I did nothing it was going to die anyway."



I hope it continues to heal and I hope others will at least try this if given the opportunity. A few details; I poked it with a 1/2" 20 guage needle with a very fast pistol style hand syringe and the dose was 1/5cc of Xylazine 100 mg strength and she went down in 2 minutes. Fifteen minutes later I reversed her after giving her 4/10 cc of Banamine and her second 7-way vaccination in a month. She took about 10 minutes to get up and she went back to the spot I poked her at. The Banamine seems to help them with stress and pain and she had lost very little blood. I did wipe her mouth clean with sterile guaze before leaving her to wakeup.
 
The Drop Jaw fawn is gone. I don't want to talk about it now, maybe later.
 
I'm sorry Joe :( This stuff just makes me cry........... I like to get on this forum to see how everyone is doing and how everyone's deer are doing, but these kinds of things tear me up. I love EVERY deer, wild or non-wild and hate to hear or see a sick or injured deer, especially the ones that don't make it.



I know it has to be tough to lose one - you are in my prayers.



Gail
 
Thankyou Susan and Gail for your words. I would do everything the same for that fawn, but one thing. I would have tried to sew both parts of her jaw back together before putting the stretchy on her. We had somewhere like 30 tornadoes in MN that last day and Susan will atest to how miserable the weather was that day the fawn pulled the stretchy off and did more damage to herself. I made the judgement call right then to end the suffering.



I realized something tonight when a doe walked up to me. I once had a doe that I was treating for pneumonia. On one October afternoon I decided to switch her treatment when I could hear her breathing from 50 yards away. I gave her a shot of Micotil 400 and followed up a few days later with another shot of the same. Micotil 400 is very dangerous, but also effective and shouldn't be used unless it is the last resort. Within a week that doe was hitting the feed hard and making up for lost time. That doe did not fawn for me and I sold her. When she gave birth the next year I bought and brought home her first daughter the day after she gave birth to bottle-feed.



That is the doe that walked up to me tonight. If I sold all my deer I would hold onto this one. Sometimes things work out when the odds are stacked very high against you and the mother of this great doe had one hoof in the grave when I found her that one day. To lose an animal is tough, but it happens and probably always will. All we can be is good stewards to these animals. Thank-you again for your empathy.
 
Joe,



Sorry to hear about the loss of your fawn. Its hard enough when you lose one at random, even harder when you have treated them with your personal touch. Wishing you a better day tomorrow & beyond.



Cyndi
 
Joe, that was so sweet. You got me crying again........ When Faline got really sick about 2 1/2yrs ago, it was one of the worst days of my life. I really thought she was going to die. She could barely stand/walk or hold her head up, eyes/ears droopy, coughing. I would sit down next to her and she would lay her head on my lap and sleep. When I got up, she struggled to get to her feet, but she would follow me and stand next to me, and close her eyes. It was HORRIBLE! I called off of work and tried to find someone that could help me - it was an all day affair. None of the local vets know anything about deer. I found a large animal vet that said he would supply meds but needed to know what meds were safe to give deer. I called the deer farm where I bought Faline from - they gave me info on the vet they use, Sugar-Creek Veterinarian in OH. Of course they are about 4hrs away from where I live, but man did they help me and Faline! I called and left a msg, Dr. Thompson called back and he was very caring. I gave him all the info I could on her condition and he told me what to give her - I believe Banamine and 2 other meds, one for pain/stress. He even called the vet who was supplying the meds to educate him a little on deer -----super sweet! Anyway, the local vet was at a party with his family that evening but met with my husband to give him the meds. It was the first shot I had ever given! I was SUPER nervous! I slept (very little) on the floor next to her. The next morning there was a HUGE improvement. By that afternoon she was completely normal! Many tears were shed, and lots of prayers were said! Of course, she has had a few minor episodes since then but that was by far the worst.



I will do anything to save my babies. Every day when I am at work or away from home I stress and worry about them. I really pray for GOD to care for them because it's completely out of my power when I am not home to protect them. I know he watches over them because, well, they are with me. I have had 4 huge tree limbs and 3 trees fall (bad weather) in the past 2yrs and all the limbs came within a foot of the pen, they could have easily taken down the fence if they had fallen on it. 1 tree fell on another tree which kept it from the fence, another tree - one of the branches got stuck on another trees branch, it was just hanging there resting on the fence - only bent it about 4inches!! The other tree fell on my house....that sucked - $4000.00 in damages. But I would rather my house than my girls or the pen! I can replace the damaged part of my roof and upstairs ceiling, but I cannot replace my babies.



Wow, I really went on & on.....Sorry. I guess what I am trying to say is, we love our deer and want to and will do everything in our power to care for them. When we lose one (don't want to experience it, but know one day I will :-( sighhh) it's tough. You are a good man for doing what you did for your fawn. How is the mommy?
 
Gail, I am from MN, but I have been to Sugarcreek vet clinic where one of the best deer vets Dr. Shane Donnelly resides. He has treated deer for many years and there are a lot of Amish deer farms in Holmes county that couldn't do without him. I use Banamine frequently and it helps with stress and shipping fever. I would guess one of the other meds was probably Batril.



Deer are tough and will overcome most things on their own. Usually when you see that they are sick you don't have much time to react especially when they are young. It was good of you to be pro-active the way you did. Weather is one of those things you can't control. On Monday August 13th of 2007 at exactly 9:00 P.M. we had a 50 year storm here. I did not lose a deer and none escaped because I am double-fenced. The flooding rains went away, but it took me over six months to clean up the tree damage. I had to build two new fence lines and I now have a small pen with nothing in it except uprooted trees and twisted fence. About eleven months later another storm hit and I spent the next year cleaning up and I cut additional trees down that were potential future threats. The weather sucks almost as much as the Vikings do. :)
 
LOL, that Vikings comment got me :) Who dat?



I love trees, I hate trees....when they fall. They provide shade and food for my girls so for that I love them! Plus, most are just beautiful. I thought about double fencing, I may have to rethink it, but if a tree falls obviously it's not going to matter. I had a couple of instances where a wild buck tried to get in - boy did they cause some damage! Fortunately, my girls did not escape.



You are correct, the other drug was in fact Batril. I love Sugar Creek vet clinic - for not being a "patient" they really went out of their way to help Faline. Dr. Thompson also gave me his cell number and asked me to call over the next couple of days to give him an update on her progress. He said to call anytime I needed help with her. SUPER SWEET! I did have to call another time but called the clinic - they had a vet return my call, it was not Dr. Thompson, it may have been Dr. Donnelly but I am not sure - whoever it was - was also wonderful! I wish I lived close to them :) In one of my conversations with Dr. Thompson he spoke highly of Dr. Donnelly and his knowledge of deer. He also said Dr. Donnelly has seminars about deer - I really need to look into that. I want to know as much as there is to know about deer. The more I know the more confident I will be. :)



Gail-
 
Gail, Two words not to use when talking about whitetails and raising them. Those words are NEVER and ALWAYS. If you remember that you will be able to go with the flow easier. Just remember that the majority of society can't figure out why we have the passion for these animals the way we do. The more ways you can think of to protect and to provide for them ultimately will give you many years of enjoyment with the them. I would recommend double fencing to everybody that owns deer. You can't have enough fence or gates in the world I live in.
 
Joe

Sorry to hear you lost the fawn. I realize hind-sight is 20-20 but isolating the fawn may have helped. Never the less, you have introduced many of us to an alternative method to treat an injury such as this and I plan to apply this technology to other similar issues/injuries. It is amazing how much we can learn from an incident like this and that fawn is the reason we have gained this knowledge. Each intervention, successful or not, teaches us how to handle various issues. Therefore, the fawn left you with something.....knowledge...what a wonderful legacy to its brief life. I had a friend who lost a fawn after a long intervention. As he sat there holding the lifeless carcass, tears streaming down both cheeks, he looked up at me and said....It doesn't hurt as much when you lose a chicken.....Needless to say, that has become a standard line around our circle and it's meaning is well understood. These magnificant animals can really get under your skin. I hope you can get some solice from the line and know that more fawns will come and more problems will arise that will require the same ingenuity and resolve you had with this baby. Good Luck.
 
Scott, I posted the picture and story not knowing if this fawn would make it or not. I knew that even if it didn't that possibly someone that had one with a little less trauma to it could try doing this and succeed. It would not have been fair to the fawn and it would have been selfish on my part to continue treatment. As far as isolating the fawn I might have tried that if it was younger when the accident happened.



This fawn was the fourth generation of this doe-line which I have not bottle-fed any deer from and every generation has gotten better when it comes to handling them. The mother of this fawn is two and a first time mother and on a day to day basis is a five foot deer. The first daughter that came out of her grand-mother however was one of the wildest fawns that I ever did see. After I lost that doe fawn years ago I bred the Sundance bloodline into that first generation doe and was fortunate to produce a calm doe that is the mother of my calm two year old I have now. I did this because the Sundance line from Ohio has a good reputation for producing calm deer. I think that many times breeders choose antler traits and pedigrees and overlook temperment when they choose new lines to bring into their herd. By breeding these good temperment lines into my herd on both sides I now have a much calmer herd than I did ten years ago even though I have less bottle-feds now than I did back then.



Thanks everybody for your comments. I will end this now since I have to get up early because I am expecting fawns in the morning. I will update you with the news later. Joe
 

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