QDMA Article

[Fishbonker]

There is an article in the Feb. issue of Quality Whitetails about how the rumen of a deer works. The author states that as deer diets change with the seasons, so does their “rumen soup” of volatile fatty acids and bacterial flora. One point he tried to make was if you change a deer’s diet by putting out corn piles when they have adapted to higher fiber browse, the digestive action in the rumen will slow down and their ability to convert this “new” food to useable nutrition will be negatively effected thereby causing the deer to use up more of its stored fat than it would have if left to sticks and stems. He states it may take a deer a week to ten days to readapt their “rumen soup” from high fiber browse to high carb feed. He also stated the same is true if deer are fed hay late in the winter season.

I read the article and thought about all the game cams out there with corn piles in front of them. I don’t think this is a big deal here in Iowa where most of the deer have at least some corn in their diet all winter from browsing in the picked corn fields. However, in areas where there isn’t any corn and a deer’s only forage is sticks it may be a bad idea to bait your game cams with corn. I suppose the same could be true here in Iowa if we had several inches of snow all winter stopping the deer from finding any downed corn.

Anyway, that’s what I came away from that article with. Other thoughts? I’m here to learn.

The ‘Bonker

 

[bjkpharmd]

Deer that Ghost's cams get sure look healthy so I had figured by the same kind of thinking (thats scary) that enough waste grain was in their diet that the article may not be sucha big deal in a heavy ag state.