My big garden consists of a wire fence area and a connected annex with only deer netting. After two incidents in two days of a deer getting in through the wire fence I'm forced to put up deer netting around that part to. But I learned an easy way while putting netting back up after said deer went through the netting to get out of the garden. I run cotton clothes line around the top of the posts at 6.5 ft and simply hang the netting on the clothes line (with clothes pins) instead of tieing off to the posts. I also run clothes line around at waist level so the deer know where the barrier is (similar to marking a fence to make it visible to horses.)
My deer are used to squeezing through briars so they will squeeze through broken sections of the rusty wire fence rather than jumping over, believe it or not. I couldn't believe the hole this one went through but hair was stuck to the wires.
After two hits my peas and lettuce are mostly eaten and the sunchoke is down to sticks. On a good note the strawberry patch was thinned out so that I can better see the berries.
I saw the first little fawn in the back yard today...only a few days old.
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rainbowgardener
- Super Green Thumb
- Posts: 25279
- Joined: Sun Feb 15, 2009 6:04 pm
- Location: TN/GA 7b
Wow a turkey vulture station... never heard of that. Do they actually come to it? What do they eat?
It is a pity the deer are so voracious, they are such beautiful animals. What we need is to bring back the wolves and coyotes. I suppose not practical in the city!
The hanging deer netting sounds like a good idea if deer are your main problem. I keep mine stapled to the ground, because it has to keep out raccoons, groundhogs, squirrels, etc.
It is a pity the deer are so voracious, they are such beautiful animals. What we need is to bring back the wolves and coyotes. I suppose not practical in the city!
The hanging deer netting sounds like a good idea if deer are your main problem. I keep mine stapled to the ground, because it has to keep out raccoons, groundhogs, squirrels, etc.
I can still stake down the bottom of the netting, so hanging it doesn't change that, it just lessens the hassle of trying to tie it off to stakes high in the air.
Re vultures,
Part of our back property is about 2 acres that used to be a horse pasture. I mow it a couple of times a summer to use the grass for mulch. Along one side is a huge oak tree with several large dead branches that is perfect for vultures to perch. We keep a live trap set unbaited all summer to clear out racoons and woodchucks, which have caused quite a bit of property damage over the years, and add to that the occasional deer that likes to die out back after getting hit by a car, so there is frequent enough food in the area that it is on the flight path of the local vultures, and they find things within a day or two at most.
Several times a year I see deer limping around in the yard, often with scrapes on them from, presumably, getting hit by cars. We generally watch three fawns grow up each year and it's tough when you see one get hurt at some point in its life. One of them lost a foot somehow. Two winters ago I had the game warden come out to put down a hurt deer that had been laid up behind the garden for several days, but just as the officer was taking aim from about 10 feet away the deer got up and dragged itself off through the underbrush. I don't know what happend to it, but it would have had trouble finding enough to eat at that time of the year without being able to move about.
For each deer that I see hurt I think that there could have been some one I know in the car hurt or killed. And ticks are as common as grasshoppers now. Luckily we don't have Lime disease here that I know of.
We do have coyotes in the county now, but they tend to cause more trouble by eating pets and baby livestock than good by clearing out deer.
Re vultures,
Part of our back property is about 2 acres that used to be a horse pasture. I mow it a couple of times a summer to use the grass for mulch. Along one side is a huge oak tree with several large dead branches that is perfect for vultures to perch. We keep a live trap set unbaited all summer to clear out racoons and woodchucks, which have caused quite a bit of property damage over the years, and add to that the occasional deer that likes to die out back after getting hit by a car, so there is frequent enough food in the area that it is on the flight path of the local vultures, and they find things within a day or two at most.
Several times a year I see deer limping around in the yard, often with scrapes on them from, presumably, getting hit by cars. We generally watch three fawns grow up each year and it's tough when you see one get hurt at some point in its life. One of them lost a foot somehow. Two winters ago I had the game warden come out to put down a hurt deer that had been laid up behind the garden for several days, but just as the officer was taking aim from about 10 feet away the deer got up and dragged itself off through the underbrush. I don't know what happend to it, but it would have had trouble finding enough to eat at that time of the year without being able to move about.
For each deer that I see hurt I think that there could have been some one I know in the car hurt or killed. And ticks are as common as grasshoppers now. Luckily we don't have Lime disease here that I know of.
We do have coyotes in the county now, but they tend to cause more trouble by eating pets and baby livestock than good by clearing out deer.