Ani-Logics Outdoors

With winter weather settling in across much of the nation, it’s time to take inventory of food availability in your area.  Even if you had success with a food plot or left standing crops, keeping a supplemental feeding program active during the next few months will help your deer hit the ground running in terms of growth once spring green up occurs.

If you have not been using any supplemental feed up to this point, be mindful with how you introduce it to your herd.  If the deer are starving, large amounts of supplemental feed can actually be harmful because they will eat so much so fast that they cannot digest it in time.  A sudden change in diet does not allow the normal microflora of the rumen to adjust.

Feeding deer straight corn, wheat, or barley causes a change in the pH of the rumen which harms the normal microflora in the rumen.  This result is rumen acidosis or grain overload caused by large amounts of feed high in carbohydrates and low in fiber.  One of the positive benefits of Ani-Supplement Gold is that it includes a probiotic which provides deer with the necessary flora to digest it efficiently.  It also contains a diverse mixture of ingredients so that all types of gut microflora have something to consume.

In regards to application, I like to start by putting small (less than 10 lb) piles on the ground and scattering piles throughout the area.   I usually put my feed sites near food plots because deer are already using those areas to acquire nutrients and I don’t want them wasting energy by traveling any farther than they normally would for food.  In areas without food plots, try to find where deer are eating natural forage such as honeysuckle, greenbriar, brambles, or pokeweed just to name a few.  You can also increase availability of tree buds by hinge-cutting trees which puts woody browse at deer level.  Here is a great article from QDMA on the topic of winter feeding.

If you have access to feeders, try and spread them out so that no more than 20 deer are using one feeder at a time.  Too many deer around a feeder causes unnecessary stress to a herd at a time when weather is already stressful enough.  Also be aware that not all deer will eat out of a feeder, regardless of how long it’s been in an area.  Deer have a dominance based eating hierarchy and if you scatter small piles around a feeder that will allow more deer a chance to eat rather than a few dominant deer eating all the feed.

Also, keep a close eye on the condition of your feed as temperatures fluctuate.  If moisture and warm enough temps reach your feed, you have the potential for mold to develop.  Fortunately, we have included a mold inhibitor in Ani-Supplement Gold so that decreases the odds of losing feed to spoilage.  Supplemental feeding is not a cheap endeavor so minimizing waste is a very important aspect.

Remember that the three most important components for growing big bucks are age, nutrition, and genetics, and of the three, nutrition is the easiest to improve in a relatively short timeframe.