Mother Deer Teaches Her Babies How to Raid a Bird Feeder on a Cold Winter Day

A rare arctic blast dumped about four inches of snow and dropped the temperatures to the single digits for several days in the Dungeness Valley near Sequim, Washington, stressing all wildlife and vegetation. As a result, our neighborhood family of deer were desperately looking for food, and one source with which they were familiar was our bird feeder.

[@lb1460]

Beautiful deer and beautiful backyard.

[@kittenlady3193]

How fortunate you are to have such amazing visitors. I am wondering if there is a forest nearby because it looks like you are in a residential area?. Best wishes.

[@TrondBrgeKrokli]

Birdseed is rich in fat oils, so they are much more energy efficient for animals during winter and other cold periods. Hard to get wild animals to stray away from that efficiency food instinct.

[@daveruhe4031]

Please don't feed the deer. I now the intentions are good, but state wildlife offices discourage the practice.
From my states game agency: It takes two to four weeks of feeding on a new food source for deer to establish the microorganisms necessary to obtain nutrients from that food. The time and energy it takes to convert to new microorganisms uses precious fat reserves that could have been spared if the deer had fed continually on natural winter browse. Studies, including some in Pennsylvania, have documented the death of wild ruminants from feeding on highly digestible, high energy, low fiber feed such as corn in winter. This rapid exposure to a concentrated grain diet can cause a fatal disruption of the animal’s acid-base balance.
Research at the University of New Hampshire showed that a healthy deer begins winter with a 90-day fat supply. This ticking clock begins winding down in March and is the reason why weather patterns in that month often play the biggest role in deer survival.
If you’re concerned about deer survival in tough winter conditions, the best thing you can do to help them get through the critical last days of March is break out the chainsaw and provide more of the food they are adapted to eat in winter: woody browse.