Some people have to settle for cement deer

Is this the best garden decoration, or what? I just finished moving some hostas around my little fountain and the resident fawn is already sizing them up. I guess I need to decide if I am going to raise hostas or deer.

OH HOW CUTE!!!! But I think you need a taller fence ;0)
Gloria

Actually the fence is to keep out the silkie chickens. I gave up on keeping out the deer. He won't start chewing on hostas for about another month.

Don't let him chew on your hostas. Spray them with Liquid Fence. The deer and the rabbits won't bother anything sprayed with that stuff. Respray every few weeks or so. It is made out of rotten eggs among other things.

We have tons of deer here at our farm too. I like to watch them as long as they keep their distance from my stuff. :) We put big steel cages around all the fruit trees and I have an 8 foot high cyclone fence around my veggie patch. I keep everything sprayed. It's a war and so far I'm winning. :)

Cute little guy. What a sweet picture.

I haven't seen any here yet, but have seen mamas hanging around waiting in spots I have seen fawns in other seasons. Always a treat to see the little garden grazers.

What a cutie! It looks more interested in the fountain than the hostas. ;) Hopefully it stays that way.

Melanie

What a cute lil baby...I hope your plants survive! ^_^

Your a great foster mom Jyl!

Delane

I thought you'd enjoy a picture of my back yard one early morning this past spring. This was just one part of the herd.
Birdie

Hope they don't find your garden!!

Nope they never have in almost 20 yrs!! :)

Oh Birdie! Do you have a dog that will run them off? Deer have been an ever increasing problem for me here since our dog died. If this economy ever picks back up I'm ready to get another dog. Last year the deer ate half of my crops. :( And I don't even want to talk about the raccoons! LOL

Mary Ellen

because our house is surrounded by corn fields they pretty much stay at bay. but we do have dogs.

but the 'coons I HATE!!!! Usually the cyotes keep them down, but not always. they reek havoc with my chickens.

I must have some very smart deer because if I don't spray everything with Liquid Fence they can smell and come eat everything. I missed one pot of flowers out by the road in the field and dang if they didn't pull marigolds of all things out and eat them up. Makes me so mad. Liquid Fence works great. I have an 8 foot fence around my vegetable garden. that works great too. :) I have a leanto behind the barn that is fenced in for my chickens. So far so good. Nothing has got in at them. At night they go into a coop in the barn and we close the door on them to protect them. In the morning we let them out into the pen. We are surrounded by woods with all kinds of predators in them. Last summer I saw the fattest racoon climbing my apple tree in the middle of the day to eat the last of the apples off of it. I wondered where all those apples had been going to. :)

Maybe we need some more cornfields around me to keep the deer busy. :)

Brenda

Last year we were plagued with deer...ate my tomatoes down to nubs several times, plus trimmed all my roses, hosta, and phlox. This year they seem to prefer my gardening neighbor's beds!! LOL I've never tried liquid fence, but may have to get some! I ended up covering up my row of tomatoes at night with sheets for about two weeks...then they seemed to lose interest. Maybe they thought the restaurant was closed!

By all means get the Liquid Fence. It is concentrated and goes a long ways. If you spray every 3 or 4 weeks you won't have anyone eating your stuff. It stinks terrible. It's made out of rotten eggs and other things. Be sure you're not downwind of it on a windy day though or you'll stink and nobody will want to be near you either. :) You can also spread Milorganite fertilizer around your stuff and that works pretty good. It's made out of the sludge of some water treatment plant in Milwaukee. I use it in my ornamental beds but not in the veggie garden. No need to really with the 8 foot fence.

Brenda

I use a spray made out of habenero peppers, water and a little vegetable oil. Put it all in the blender, strain and put in a spray bottle. It smells a lot better than the rotten eggs, just don't spray the corn on a windy day (the crap is like MACE, I thought I was going to die). It works on deer, bunnies and coons, but not squirrels.

the best" predator" deterrent we use is a cougar alarm. it goes off at night every 75 sec's and makes this gosh awful sound. works great. our chickens,and peafowl do go in at night to roost,however in the past we have had coons get them during the day. but when the coyotes are in full swing no badgers, or coons,or bunnies, or squirrel, or rats, or mice,nothing. I LOVE coyotes. But i do miss bunnies, and the fawns, and my barn cats. Now if they would just eat SLUGS!
Not that long ago we had a black bear and cub cross our largest hay field. They aren't to afraid of coyotes!

Birdie..can you hear it go off? How do you sleep?

nope we can't hear it up at the house. Its a real low " hissing" kind of noise. :)

I hang bars of soap around my gardens !! Keeps all the deer out .. I just drill a hole in the bar of soap and hang where I can ..what a cute baby deer !!!

Birdie, we had coyotes but they had to move and or kill then as they became rabid and were trying to take human kids while adults were around !! becareful !!

yea, I heard about that!! Scary for you guys!!

coyotes are dangerous animals. I will not rehabilitate them as they are pack animals and a lone coyote in a strange area will not be able to hunt well. If he is used to humans he will seek out humans when he gets hungry and then you have problems.

They were so bad here last year that I couldn't leave the fawns in their pens at night if they were new and crying. Then some idiot didn't vaccinate their dogs and brought parvo into the neighborhood. It wiped out every coyote in the area. Thank goodness! t will be a few years before they will build numbers like that again.

Coyotes look like dogs, they are not!

There are some new studies that were done that were posted in Field and Stream last month. The coyote is responsible for more fawn deaths than ever thought of before. 90%

I have seen first hand what they can do to a full sized deer in one evening. It is scary stuff. They have their place in nature, but too many in an area can be a bad thing.

I gotta say, you must have a pretty noisy place right now with all the kids! I was going to say zoo, but a zoo has nothing on you!

You're right. You can go home to quiet from a zoo!

My personal favorite to keep deer from my hostas, etc is: one cup milk, 2 eggs, 1 tablespoon veg. oil and a squirt of liquid dish soap added to a gallon of water. I don't have to strain it before putting it into my sprayer. I don't know how much Liquid Fence costs, but I bet this is a lot less. I haven't had a hosta bothered since I started using it, except the one I forgot to spray. The deer tracks went right up to some of the others and turned away!

That's a great formula. I've copied it down. The Liquid Fence concentrate is expensive.........about $40 a quart bottle but it is so concentrated it lasts a long time.

I had to laugh today. The neighbor who lives on the corner of my road cleared out a huge spot and tilled it all up and planted a big vegetable garden. He went to all the trouble to make fenceposts out of tree trunks and he put what looks like one string or wire around the whole thing and he's hanging plastic bags from each post. I guess he thinks the bags whipping in the wind will scare off the wild life. I really don't know. Well, today when we rounded the corner there were two deer in his garden munching away. OMG, I know they sure will be ticked when they see all their plants gone. People teased me when I put up an 8 foot chain link fence with gate around my veggie garden but nobody has got in there yet to eat a thing. :)

Brenda

Really Birdie a black bear and a cub? Wow I must be nieve. I did not knoe there were any bears around here! Wow. Ronna

That is so kind of the man to provide the bags. The raccoons will have something to carry all the corn in.

ROTFL! I can picture that!