Episode 21 DWP- Fawn Health, What Do You Know About Poop?

In this episode the Deer Wizard shares insights gained from nearly 3 decades in the deer industry. Learn how to contest with common issues in the fawns first couple weeks of life. He also walks through a basic fawn processing protocol. https://cervidhealth.com/our-services...

This podcast is built around real-world experience, collaboration with producers and veterinarians, and nearly three decades of hands-on work across North America. The goal is simple: provide practical insight that helps producers make better decisions for herd health, genetics, and long-term success. 

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:05

Welcome to the Deer Wizard Podcast, conversation shaping the deer industry. I'm your host, Josh Newton, the Deer Wizard. Through interviews, advocacy, and industry news. We deliver field-proven insights to help producers build better herbs.

SPEAKER_01 0:20

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to another episode of the Deer Wizard Podcast. We got a solo show today. You're gonna like it. We are knee deep in fawning, and I want to share some insights with you about how we approach things. Um, this will be relevant to everyone that has deer and is having fawns this year. So I guess the um uh there's a couple uh disclaimers, if you will. Number one, most of the preparation for fawns coming into the world happens well before faunning actually takes place. Uh, that's a topic for another show. We're we're past that. So uh fawns are on the ground, they are they're coming, and like many of you, I suspect almost everybody has fawns, or you're you're about to get some. So um, you know, for us, we've got our pens as good as we can make them. We got our doughs sorted, everybody's vaccinated, they've been on um, you know, good quality nutrition, so on and so forth. Okay, so um we're gonna cover uh how we process our fawns, so um what we do when uh a fawn arrives, and then we're gonna get into um something that most everybody will uh appreciate and and some good insights that I've learned. So uh when we see when we see does you know pacing around, tail out, etc. They are um they're about ready to go, right? Milk bags filled in. And uh a lot of times if we can, we try to watch some of these does have fawns as opposed to like going out and just finding fawns. So uh that's just what we like to do. We don't have a super big herd. Obviously, if you have a few hundred animals, like that's just not possible. You'd you'd live out there, but we identify uh the doe ready to have fawns, we watch her have fawns. The the typical process is the fawns come, mom cleans them up, she cleans up herself, eats the afterbirth, and uh the fawns drink. I can't tell you how important like the first few hours is for those fawns. And uh making sure that they're in, I'm using air quotes if you're if you're listening, a clean environment. So those fawns come out, and you know, mom does the best she can. The only tool that she has to keep things clean is her tongue, right? And so she's making sure that her udder's clean, she's making sure the back end's clean, she's licking them fawns clean, and they're drinking. Uh, we did a this is a quick sidebar. We did a uh kind of an internal study here. We wanted to measure, and there's a there's a technical term for this. I don't know what it is off the top of my head. Um just kind of shooting from the hip because I wanted to get this uh this episode here out to you, and I I'm just incredibly busy, as I suspect many of you are. Uh I just didn't have time to look it up. But anyway, so we drew blood on um 25 fawns that we had born. And the met we were just looking at protein levels in the blood, and we wanted to make sure that the fawns were getting colostrum. This was a measure of that, and so out of 25 fawns born, the our our baseline was five. And out of 25 fawns born, 24 of them exceeded uh the baseline of five, and only one fawn had under a five score, it was like a 4.7, and she was a small triplet, so she still got milk, she just didn't get the um the uh passive level that we were looking for at that five mark. So the point of this is is that the overwhelming majority of at least our does here, they're great moms, they do a good job. I suspect that the overwhelming majority of your does do the same. This is this is inherent in their nature, and it's why the whitetail deer is such a huge success story in um these does having you know great reproduction rates, multiple births, you know, healthy fawns, etc. So um it's to say that that they do a good job getting milk into those fawns. That first milk, that colostrum, uh, is so important. And if you've if you've passively watched fawns being born, didn't interrupt, uh, those does, a lot of those does will just let those fawns repeatedly nurse uh over and over and over. They always have a full belly when we go to check them. Uh, and if they don't, we can intervene. But um all of the immunity, all of the antibodies, all of those good proteins are in mom's milk, in that colostrum. And it's so it's so important for those uh fonts to to get enough colostrum so they have a good head start. Okay, so for us, um it's somewhere between three and six hours post them exiting the dough, where uh if we can, at least if it's during the day, uh, we'll go process those fawns. It's it's pretty much once mom stands up and she walks off and she's done with those fawns and their initial uh cleanup and drink, we'll we'll go ahead and and go over. Uh the only time we intervene is if mom's having a problem and then it's a cat and mouse battle in your brain. Should I go? Shouldn't I go? Should I go? Shouldn't I go? That just comes with time and experience. So um our approach goes like this: we have our little kit, we walk up, we grab the fawn, we lift the tail, we figure out if it's a buck or a dough. We have a all flex TSU sampler. Uh we have uh an ear tag, we have a tuba fawn paste. Those are the three things that we always do, right? So we'll go up, we'll grab that fawn. Uh I've there's lots of different fawn cradles. Um they're super helpful. We I process them right on the ground most of the time. Uh, I just carry a towel with me. I don't know, call me cheap. I I need to get a new fawn cradle. Mine got destroyed uh quite a few years ago. I just haven't replaced it. So if you have a fawn cradle and you'd you'd uh you um you'd like me to give it a whirl, I'm happy to do so. Uh send me your contact info, I'll get one from you. Um but the um uh the fawn, we just lay it on the ground, put the towel over it, heads exposed, and we take uh 70% rubbing alcohol after we've done our our gender check. And there's only two genders, just if you you weren't clear on that, there's boys and there's girls. Um the physical examination. I guess I should start with that. The physical examination is is really quick. We make sure that they have uh two eyes, two ears, tail, good solid feet, and um they look normal, right? You can check inside their mouth, just I don't know. I've handled uh thousands of fawns, like it it just it's kind of innate. So, like within you know 10 seconds, I'm kind of like, Oh, okay, this guy's fine, right? Um, and so uh we we lay them on the ground, we put the towel over them, and then I just kneel on top of them, pressing down on each side with my my knees and my legs. So the fawn's kind of trapped in there. 70 alcohol spray on the ear. Uh, that we're gonna use the TSU sample unit. This is just a small little um hole punch that we use as a pilot hole for an ear tag, and it collects a nice tissue sample so we can do our DNA testing um and uh GBVs and breeding coefficients, all that. Okay. So spray the inside of the ear, spray the outside of the ear, and uh punch that ear. There's two, if you're watching on the video, uh here's here's an ear, there's two blood veins that run down. You can either go right below the bottom one, depending on your ear tag size, or as you move out from the ear, you can go right in between. Whatever's easiest for you. There's no right or wrong way. Um, if you have a smaller tag underneath that bottom blood vein is usually pretty good. If you're using a bigger tag, probably the center is gonna be better from a weight uh standpoint. So the alcohol is really important. No, no neosporin. So, all you neosporin users, um, I'm not a fan. I've tried it. The neosporin keeps the ear soft and it keeps it open for bacteria to get in there. So we just use the alcohol spray. We spray again, we spray the ear, we spray the the TSU punch itself, the ear punch, and uh that keeps everything as sterile and clean as we can we can make it. And it's very efficient. We just have like little tiny spray balls that we got at Walmart. Um, again, we're not processing hundreds of fawns, so we don't need a big spray bottle, just those little travel ones. They work super well. Uh we punch that, and then uh we we at the the we put the tags on the bucks in the right ear, and we put the tags and the does in the left ear. That's our preference. That's just what we do. You can do it however you want. Um, everybody gets the same color tag. Uh, the the color of the tag denotes the year that they were born. So, like 2026 for us are red tags. We're using red tags this year. Um then we spray the base. We put all of our, we use microchips for our official ID. We spray the base of the right ear. Base of the right ear. All microchips go in the base of the right ear. So on the microchip, we were using individual, we got there's lots of different brands. You can use Merc, you can use Avid. Uh, we've used most of them. They're all they're all really nice. So on the needle, there is a bevel cut on the end to make a point. The open side bevel is always facing you. All right. So you you hold the ear where the base of the ear attaches to the head. You're gonna bend. If you're watching on the video, this is definitely a video type thing. You're gonna pull the ear forward. The head's gonna be sitting right here. Here's the the base of the head. This is where the ear attaches onto. You're gonna go up about a quarter inch and you're gonna slide the point of that bevel right down and in. You want to make sure that that open part of that needle on that microchip implanter is down into the ear, it's not exposed. So you probably want to go in half an inch or so. The bevel is about a quarter inch. Uh, you want to go in about a half inch and then put that in there. Give it a little rub with your finger, kind of close up that hole. You can give it another spray with alcohol to clean it. And uh, if you want to check it, you can check it with your ear tag scanner. You should always check your your microchips just to make sure they're working prior to putting them in, but that's a great way to do it. Um, we've seen microchips work back out the hole. You gotta kind of just get them in there, but it's not too terribly hard. And then um we'll do an ear tag. So put the the uh ear tag with the number in the one side, put the stud in the other, spray the stud with alcohol, and the pilot hole from the TSU tube is where your ear tag's gonna go. Okay. Again, no neosporin, nothing to keep the tissue soft. You want it to dry and heal quickly. This will eliminate a ton of ear infections and uh open spots for bacteria to go in there. Uh, the other thing you can do is if you like, you can use a um like an iodine solution, like a 7% iodine ticature. And you can spray the navel, you can spray the hoofs. Um you know, that's that's something easy you can do. The final thing that uh we do is uh we do seven to eight grams of the headgear fawn arrival, and uh we found that if you if you put three or four grams all the way into the back of the tongue, take the applicator tube out, that fawn will chew that a little bit, it'll soften, they'll swallow it, and then you can put the remaining bit in, you can pop it back in the side of the cheek, or you can put it in the back of the tongue again. That eliminates a bunch of it coming back out the mouth. That's it. That's how we process fawns. We don't poke them with anything. Uh, we're not we're not vaccinating them when we're first processing, we're not uh doing vitamins, uh, nothing like that. Now, with that said, that's what works for us. If you're saying in a uh selenium deficient area and it's necessary for you to give Bosey to them, then you should do that. If you uh are finding that a uh shot of vitamin B complex or B12 is necessary for you uh to kind of give those fawns a little pep, you should do that. Um if you uh need to use something like bovis serum and you have like E. coli salmon L issues, you should do that. Those are all optional things. Um again, we found that over time less is more, right? Figure out the gender, identify them, put the identifications in, keep everything as clean as you can, use that alcohol. I can't stress that enough. Um, once we transitioned to to just using alcohol spray on pretty much everything, the number of infections that we got through open spots went to almost zero. Uh, and we've had plenty of ear infections over the years. So that's been that's been really helpful for us. And then we let those fawns go and we walk away and we go on to the next one. Okay, so that's the basics of our processing. This is the this is the part that I think you'll find interesting. Now, this is for um this is for mother-raised fawns. There's this will work for your bottle feds too. We're not going to get into the specifics of of bottle feeding on this show, but this is for um enteric issues or uh diarrhea slash scours in fawns. So something common that happens is fawns will get diarrhea. This happens, it really depends on the on the farm, the environment, etc. It's gonna have geographical differences, it's gonna have timing differences. So, like, there's a lot of nuance in this. I'm gonna try to keep it uh broad, but I I will give you the specifics of what we've seen over the years. Okay, so we recommend low densities for uh for fawning, if at all possible, somewhere in that four to six dose per acre range. Some of you are are like, yo, that's just way too few fawns, I understand. Or uh too few does. Like, we we need to have more than that. You can. Um, and and maybe there's things you can do to help keep your mortality rate low or uh your morbidity in these fawns uh low as well. That's not the purpose of this. The purpose of this is to identify issues, treat issues, and then come up with preventative protocols. Okay, so um in the first uh two to three weeks of life, the overwhelming majority of fawns that die from dehydration, right? Dehydration is typically caused by scours or diarrhea, right? So how do we how do we assess this? What do we do with this information? So there's a couple kind of telltale signs to look for, and again, with bottle feds, it's easy. You got your hands on them every day, they're easily treatable, it's easy to kind of prevent stuff, keep stuff clean. Out in the pens is a different story. So we have low um stocking densities. You want to make sure that the bacteria load in the ground is low. Now, a couple of the things that we found that help with that is resting pastures. So we're gonna wean, we're gonna wean fawns, uh, call it mid-September, October, and then those dedicated fawning pens are gonna sit empty all winter up until here in the north, up until the end of April. And we're gonna put them back in during that time. Soil improvements, lime, fertilizer, seed, organic stimulation, um, getting the microbes to do their work on um the ground, right? The dirt is so important. Watch so many fawns come out, they're a day old. What are they doing? They're just chewing on that dirt. Well, if the dirt's infected with bacteria, they're just putting that right into their systems. And so it's really important to try to make sure that over time you're not compacting ground, you're not overloading animals, because like that ground it needs oxygen, it needs microbial activity. Uh, just because you can grow grass doesn't mean that you don't have bacteria. And so the longer you have deer on specific pastures, the more that bacteria load will build up. This is a fact. It's you know, it's it's not something uh that's up for debate. That's that's gonna happen, okay? And you can get away with it for a while, probably. Okay, so um mother raised fawns. Sorry, it's it there's a lot going on with this topic. I want to try to be thorough so you you understand what what I've seen, um, so it can help you on on your farm. Okay, so when we look at mother raised fawns, some of these moms are are really, really good does, right? What does that mean? It means they nurse their fawns a lot, their fawns grow good, they keep them very clean. Those those does are always licking on those fawns. So first thing they do, fawn walks up, lick, lick, lick, lick, lick, right around to the back end, then that fawn starts drinking. Okay. What is normal? Normal for a fawn that's anywhere from a couple days old into you know a few weeks old is generally speaking, slick, flat laid hair and a nice dry kind of slick coat tail. How do we tell if a fawn has diarrhea? It's very hard to watch them have diarrhea unless it's like squirting out the back when they walk. Because mom just keeps them clean all the time. She just will not let that stuff uh get in the pen. She'll eat it off the ground, she'll clean it off of them. So um, if you find fawns that have I caught like a rat tail, right?

SPEAKER_00 21:51

So it's like a just a slick wet tail. This isn't immediately after feeding, but um

SPEAKER_01 22:00

Right, where they're like over-groomed. Or, and or um the backsides of their legs and their haunches, like right above the tarsils, uh, the hair is standing up, right? She's licked it up. She's clean, clean, clean, clean, clean. That just means they've had diarrhea, it's gone down their legs. And they're trying to get that scent off. You'll also see it above the base of the tail. So if this is the tail sticking off, it'll be right here if you're watching on the video, right from the base of the tail into the back, right? It'll kind of be puffy. So make sure you have your binoculars. We've talked about this a hundred times. Binoculars are like one of the greatest tools you can have as a deer farmer. Invest as much possible money in the highest quality optics that you can have and um always have those things on you. Like they never leave my side uh when I'm when I'm like in the summer when I'm uh doing my fawn checks and stuff. So I'm always, always looking through the binoculars. Okay, so if you've identified a an animal that has diarrhea, fawn, it can be very difficult to catch. If you can catch them and they're like, you know, 10 days old, two weeks old, three weeks old, and you can catch them easy, they're really sick, right? And it's gonna be hard to bring them back because they've just been like processing that that disease for too too long. Um the best thing that you can do is get a fecal sample like immediately. So if you've identified an animal loose stool, try to get that thing caught. Um use a long handle fishing net. So in our pens, we have uh strips that we we mow, so some of it's flat. There's some tall stuff. Fawns like to hang in the tall stuff. We try to sneak up on them, um, get them after their morning feeding, right? Where they're all laid down, bedded down, because if they're up on their feet, it's a it's a track race, and you're gonna have a heck of a time catching them. The other thing you can do is you can put structures in the pen that they can kind of bed up against, whether that's a pallet up against the fence, uh 55-gallon barrels with the ends cut out, whatever. Anything you can do to kind of strategize getting into that fawn. So scoop them up with a long handle fishing net, have a rubber glove, try to get them to defecate into the rubber glove, take that rubber glove off, turn it inside out, drop it into a ziploc bag, mark the ziploc bag, tag number, date, fecal sample. You're gonna want to get that over to the lab. Have them run a full panel on that. What does that look like? They're gonna check for E. coli. This is gonna be the the major bacteria that you're dealing with is E.

SPEAKER_00 24:49

coli.

SPEAKER_01 24:50

There are literally hundreds of E. coli, some good, some bad. Um if you're getting diarrhea, there's there's the bad in there. Um, you're also gonna be looking for salmonella, clostridials. Um, you can get into parasites, uh, those could be stomach worms, uh, giardia, coccidia, things like that, uh, cryptosporidium. Uh, I will comment that in fawns that are under about 10 or 12 days old, coccidia has not had a chance in its life cycle to reproduce enough ocytes to come up on a test. Uh, it doesn't mean that they don't have them in there, but there's there's only a few. So just keep keep that in mind. Again, the majority of what you're going to be seeing is caused from E. coli. And um, there's tons of different uh protocols. Like, so if you're on any of the the Facebook groups or the Deer Forums, there's tons of different protocols for for treating E. coli. What I will tell you, and this is just like this is very, very important, that E. coli is uh sensitive. Certain E. coli are sensitive to certain antibiotics. So it's very important to know which antibiotic works. So what what do I mean? I'll give you an example. You know that it's E. coli and you're using something like LA300, very common, right? And you're not seeing the improvements in the condition of the animal. Most likely that specific strain of E. coli is resistant to that particular antibiotic. Okay. This happens all the time. So you'll see a protocol. Oh, give give it uh two cc's of exeedor, give it some spectroguard, or give it some Albon, or whatever that may be. And that may buy you some time, right? But knowing the particular antibiotic that is effective for that strain of E. coli is going to be way better in the long run. I know it takes time, I know it's frustrating, especially if you have multiple cases of E. coli and some of these fawns and they're dying. Um, but get an antibiotic susceptibility test done or an MIC. Right? So you can send it to a lab. We have what we call our herd discovery program at Servit Health Management. You can get a hold of us, we will help you through the process. I've looked at literally hundreds of um diagnostic charts and antibiotic susceptibility charts. Uh, I'll guide you through that process. Uh, it benefits everyone long term. It's super simple. Um, we can help you with that. But make sure that you you get that. So the first first case of of diarrhea in a mother-raised fawn, try to get that that fecal sample over to the lab right away because the testing takes time. E. coli grows really fast, they'll tell you that they have E. coli. They can do um, they can do genomic sequencing on it, so they can try to find the strain. Uh, the antibiotic susceptibility test does take some time. Okay. But it is so important. So they'll test it against, you know, 10 or 12 or 15 different antibiotics, and you may find that only one antibiotic works, which means all the other ones that all the other deer gurus are telling you to use are are not effective. Some may be better than others, but um, it's really important. So uh the other thing is, is don't be afraid to uh use some fawn paste on these guys. So they are they are struggling with the growth, the massive growth of these E.

SPEAKER_00 29:04

coli colonies, right? So the E. coli gets in there and it just blossoms and grows.

SPEAKER_01 29:10

And so what that fawn paste does is it competes with that growth of the E. coli and it provides um good positive bacteria to help try to colonize and outcompete the E. coli, which is very difficult, but like fawn paste um along with the antibiotic treatment may get you through. Um, if you get something that's really dehydrated, trying to get some fluids into it is is super helpful. You may have to do multiple rounds of catching these fawns. Again, it's it's a process, but I I can't stress enough that antibiotic susceptibility um testing, at least on those those first couple, till you develop a trend or a pattern of what antibiotics will work for the specific E. coli's you have. Um that that's the general gist of it. I just wanted to stress, I know the the first part was kind of um just some font processing, but this is really important when you're when you're dealing with um diarrhea in these fawns, and it's coming, right? Like the the posts on Facebook are coming. My phone's already starting to ring. Um, you know, with people having some challenges with with this, and and that's the playbook. All right, get those fecal samples over, get the antibiotic susceptibility test performed. Uh, if you're unfamiliar with how to read those charts, again, I'm happy to help you. Uh, we want to see those phones do well. Now, what do we do with all that information, right? That was a very, you know, treatment heavy um protocol. We want to work on preventative things. And I touched on some of those kind of high level quickly. But long term, we start making those those shifts and adjustments. And we'll we'll save that for another show. But this'll this will get you through at least those first couple weeks there. And um, you know, hopefully everybody's you know starting to see the fruits of their label from labor from their breeding programs and uh enjoying these these phones and someone coming along.

SPEAKER_00 31:23

So with that, stay tuned for another episode of the Deer Wizards.