Our Fawns!
Fawns are as cute as can be and summer is always an exciting time of year at Whitetail Deer of Texas!
Whitetail deer gestation is approximately 200 days...with most babies arriving during the months of June and July.
We rise early each summer morning and head to the deer pens to see if any babies have been born.
When we have had a wet spring, looking for the newborns is a lot like an Easter egg hunt. Momma deer hide their young and tell them not to move. So the search for the little ones - singletons, twins or triplets is quite interesting.
Once the young are at least 24 hours old, they are given ear tags and ear tattoos. Each is weighed and hair samples are pulled for DNA purposes. We, also, provide deer fawn nutritional supplements - primarily probiotics paste. In the case of triplets, the smallest baby is pulled for bottle-raising. We bottle-raise our little girls using
Superior Milk Replacers (or goat's milk) and a
lambar bucket. (Click on the link to learn how we utilize a lambar bucket with our fawns.)
The spotted fawns are well camouflaged by mother nature with little white markings which will fade in about 3 months.
The babies nurse often, and the mother always licks the newborn clean so that little odor is left on the baby. This helps protect the young from danger in the wild.
After about a week, the newborns will begin to eat feed. In a few weeks, the young will really begin to exercise their little legs. Watching the little ones run and play with one another is quite amusing. It's obvious that hanging out with their buddies is great fun!
As you can tell, we take great pride in our baby deer. While they are hard to part with, we do have young doe for sale on an annual basis. Typically, all bucks are held until they are three years old; thus, bucks are generally not available until they are older.
As a side note, we receive a lot of inquiries from individuals wishing to purchase a fawn to bottle raise as a pet. There are rules and regulations for having deer in captivity and permitting is required. Sorry, but we only sell deer to other breeders and to individuals who wish to improve the genetics of deer on their ranch. Thanks, though, for your interest...the fawns are pretty irresistible!
