There is a lot of controvercy about the pros and cons of bottle feeding vs. Mama. Have you ever pulled one of the two twin fawns to bottle feed and then compare its progress vs. his or her twin with Mama. My limited experience has shown me it dependes a lot on how smooth the transition goes for the pulled fawn and how healthy it stays until weaning. I have seen some temporary stunted growth that takes as long as two years to "catch up". In a worst case scenario I had a policeman bring me a 2 to 3 week old wild fawn that took a couple of weeks to finally take a bottle. She is now 2.5 yrs. old and is still only half the size of other wild adult does. As a matter of fact when she lost her fawn coat, she grew her winter coat and has NEVER shed in the summer. It just stays the same. What have you experienced? Tom
Have you ever tried this ?
- Thread starter Buckman
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Joined Apr 2009
343 Posts | 0+
Cascade, Iowa
I like seperating twin buck fawns. Taking one off to bottle feed and leaving the other on the doe. I have just as or better luck bottle feeding.
The two bucks pictured are twin yearlings from this year.
1st one was doe raised, scored 143"
2nd was bottle fed, scored 171"
Hope everyone has good Christmas:
The two bucks pictured are twin yearlings from this year.
1st one was doe raised, scored 143"
2nd was bottle fed, scored 171"
Hope everyone has good Christmas:
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I don't see the bottle fed deer being smaller here. I have both bottle raised and mother raised togather and they all are about the same size. The largest one is a bottle fed. My largest 1 1/2 year old is a bottle fed buck that is well over 200lb. I have some mother raised fawn's that are just about as tame as bottle fed's if they all would stay that tame I would let the mother's raise all of them. The fawn's that have taken the bottle for me easy were the one's I have had to take early 12 hour's or less. I had to take two at birth this year and they did just fine.
Two year old womb brothers on the left and right. The one on the left was taken to the vet clinic nearly dead at 2 weeks of age. He survived and we had to bottle feed him. He scores 285 4/8, his brother scores 205. We see no differences in body size from bottle fed to mother raised. By the way, we use Zoologic milk replacer.
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Joined Apr 2009
1,562 Posts | 0+
cental Pennsylvania
I also observe that my bottlefeds are pretty much the same size as the mama fed ones at weaning every year, really no obvious size difference. Unless I have to feed a fawn thats in really rough shape, it will usually be smaller for most of its first year or so but they seem to always catch up.