Research on water consumption by Whitetail Deer in S. Texas....

30 March 2016, 07:22

This article is from the March 10, 2016 issue of "Livestock Weekly" a newspaper which I highly recommend for those interested in Texas Livestock and land with an emphasis on Western Texas. The article is too long for me to type all of it, so I'm just going to repeat the high points. I was amazed at how little water deer consume.

quote:
Researcher Investigates Water Consumption by Whitetail Deer
by Colleen Schreiber

...Little is known, however, about just how much WT (my abbrev.) deer consume in S. Tx environments. Hunter Brooks, a graduate student at Texas A&M Kingsville, set out to address this question. More specifically he wanted to see how age, season, and deer density affect water consumption in a WTD population.

...The study was conducted on the Commanche and Faith Ranches in Dimmit County......The actual study encompassed 2 200 acre enclosures on each ranch. One with 20 deer and one with 60 deer. Actual numbers.

...The data included runs from Jan. to August, 2015.

..."We saw a lot of individual variation, for example one buck visited the water trough 261 times while a doe in the same enclosure only visited 3 times."

...Overall the average individual water consumption on a weekly basis for the bucks was 4/10ths gal., for the does it was about half that.

...Brooks also found that season did not affect water consumption for bucks on any age, nor did it affect does younger than 6.5 years.

...Does over 6.5 years of age, he found, did drink significantly more water during the spring and summer season.

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I have come to understand that in hunting, the goal is not the goal but the process.

30 March 2016, 08:09

Crazyhorseconsulting

Just an observation, nothing more, but over the years working with livestock and various forms of native wildlife in a zoo setting and the wild, many animals and birds obtain a good bit of their moisture intake from the vegetation they consume.

30 March 2016, 17:30

Gatogordo

That was addressed in the article, there are 3 ways deer get water....from free surface water, from what they consume, and from the metabolism of their fat, etc.

It was pointed out that feeding deer protein pellets, etc was a dryer food than natural vegetation so it behooved the feeder to have water available near a feed station.