Originally Posted By: Steve Ditchkoff
Originally Posted By: BSK
Originally Posted By: BhamFred
BSK, do you think, or does your experience show you that younger does take as good a care of their fawns as older does do???


Honestly, I have seen no data either way. The only data I've seen is that older does produce more surviving fawns than younger does. But that's just common sense. Older, more experienced does should be better mothers than younger, less exerienced does.


There are some pretty good data from other deer species that indicate that fawns of older mothers have greater survival rates on a per fawn basis than fawns of younger mothers. With that being said, everything needs to be normalized in an analysis like this. For example...a 2 year old doe that tends to produce a single fawn will be producing much more milk/fawn than a 4 year old doe that will likely produce twins. So...examination of these factors requires large sample sizes and not a lot of studies have been able to correctly examine all the factors that influence fawn survival and tease out the effect of doe age.


Good stuff Steve.