As we begin to close out the winter months and look toward spring, now is a good time to start thinking about the deer herd’s health. Spring is the season for fawn births and antler growth. Late winter into spring is when deer shed their antlers and begin to grow new ones. So, by keeping your herd healthy now, you’ll set them up with a solid nutritional base as they go into this formative season.
Nutrients Help Fawns and Antlers Grow
Does need adequate nutrition during the winter months so that they can be as healthy as possible when they have their fawns during spring. The fawns will get their nutrition through the does’ milk, so the does need to have the right balance of nutrition in their systems so they can pass the vitamins down to the fawns when they feed. Fawns grow very rapidly, so to support that quick growth, doe milk has even more fat and protein than cow milk. It is also packed with calcium and magnesium. Calcium is one of the primary ingredients in our Wild Water Mineral Supplements for this exact reason.
Protein, calcium and phosphorus are also the main nutrients that cause antlers to grow solid and strong. Our supplements can provide the herd with the right minerals they need to help encourage fawn growth, antler health, and overall herd health. The minerals can be added to any water source, including our Wild Water Systems. One package of the minerals treats 50 gallons of water. Give the deer this nutrition now so that they can go into spring ready to grow their antlers and have healthy fawns.
Feed them with our Feeders
Our Feedbank Feeders can hold any kind of feed you want to help bring deer to your property and provide them with the nutrition they need. Our Gravity Deer Feeders have ports that are high off the ground and level with the deer’s face. This allows them to walk right up to the feeder, eat out of the port, and activate the feeder to release more. The feeders hold anywhere from 40 to 600 pounds of feed. The single-post design gives their antlers room as they bend down to eat off the ground. This is vital to analyzing the herd because you don’t want them to damage their antlers prematurely and drop them before they normally would have. When a deer’s antlers drop can indicate how healthy they are, so losing antlers to a feeding post skews the stats and results if you’re studying the deer.
Our Feedbank Timber Deer Feeders are a circular tree stump design with a barrel for the feed. The multiple ports are completely sitting on the ground, so this design also allows room for the antlers. The Timber Feeders hold either 250 or 500 pounds of feed. You can fill your feeders with corn, soybeans, and other food the deer would normally eat. You don’t want to introduce new food to their diet now, so keep putting out what you’ve already been giving them. You can start with the food in the spring once their bodies are out of winter protection mode. Check and make sure supplemental feeding is legal in your area before putting out a feeder or mineral supplements.
Providing the deer herd with nutrition, reliably, throughout the winter months will help promote antler growth and a healthy spring fawn population.
Do you make sure your feeders are stocked during the winter months? Let us know how you support herd health going into spring in the comments below.
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