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Don’t Confuse Attraction with Nutrition
I recently attended a consumer trade show and I had a chance to visit with many people about what they are feeding deer in their area. I was surprised at how many people were feeding deer corn because they “tear that stuff up.” One gentleman even told me he put out gummy bears for his deer because they have a “sweet tooth.” I asked them if they wanted to give the deer in their area everything they needed to be healthy and grow big antlers. Some replied “well yes, that’s why I’m feeding them.”
The problem with their straight corn or straight anything program is that they are not providing deer with a balanced diet. Deer have a diversity of microorganisms in their stomach in order to digest a multitude of different forages. Deer typically consume well over 100 different native plants species every year. If given just corn (or any other high carbohydrate diet), the organisms that digest that single food source become a higher percentage of the total digestive flora which can lead to a number of issues, one of which is rumen acidosis. Rumen acidosis or grain overload occurs when the pH of the stomach falls well below normal and other microflora cannot survive. This leads to an inability to digest properly due to the high amount of lactic acid in the rumen and can result in death.
The point I’m trying to make here is that just because a deer eats something and returns every day to eat it again does not mean that it is meeting all of their nutritional needs. Another example of this is the attraction deer have to salt in the summer months. It is true that deer readily visit salt blocks during the growing season, mainly to offset their potassium-rich natural forage, but that doesn’t mean it’s helping them meet all of their mineral needs. Most of the research regarding what deer require for minerals involves calcium and phosphorus because they are a major component of antlers. What most people fail to realize is that deer regularly use a total of 18 elements for normal metabolism. We have found through liver sampling of harvested deer that they were not deficient in calcium or phosphorus but instead were lacking in micro minerals such as zinc, manganese, and copper.
If you are wondering what you could do to provide deer everything they need for adequate nutrition, think about how you can increase availability of a diverse diet on your property. Food plots, timber stand improvement, creating forest openings, using a balanced supplemental feed, like Supplement Gold and providing mineral sites (Mineral Dirt 180™ or Ani-Block™) are all great ways to provide nutrition and irresistible attraction in your area. As managers, we can always work to increase available nutrition, and the best way of going about that is by providing quality forage rather than vast quantities of cheap, low diversity feed products.
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