Saw a satelite photo on the weather forecast a couple of days ago.
GB all white and covered in snow
How does the muntjac and CWD handle snow and cold weather?
As I understand they have no specific rut period and can have kids (right word?) born even in winter?

Here we still have about a foot of snow, temperatures around -6 centigrade.
The reds and the roe still find plenty of food and visit a field behind my house every night.

The field behind my house.



My house to the right, you can see they scrape away the snow to get access to the grass.


The magic blue winter light

Nice photos Arild. Looks like you're in a pretty spot there.

Sorry, no idea on your questions, but I'd be interested to hear the answer as well.


stu

I would have thought the Muntjac along with Sika could deal with it pretty well. Wouldn't know about CWD. The major problem is the ground is like iron and the animals can't scrape the vegitation loose. Watched Sika brousing on the hedges last week.

WE have not had a lot of snow here, but it has been very cold, -4deg day time, -10 at night.

Makes for nice pictures though:

Dawn on New Years Eve:



Frozen Birch tree outside the bedroom window:

CWD rut around December so there should be no concerns about young, though they are light framed and skinned, they do hav quite hollow fur so will make for a better insulation than most think, and food is always a concern in hard weather for most deer
with Muntjac, they can hav young all year round and as muntjac like dense cover anyway this should help a bit to keeping out of the weather and will feed on most things, especialy pheasant feeders
but i imagine there will be quite a few fatalities in the youngster department due to the snow and even more due to hungry foxes
where i am based we hav not had that much snow and don't think that will make any difference at all to the population like it will more towards London way, where the've had shed loads

Depends where you are I think. Muntjac are predominantly browsers. I've not seen any on high energy foodstuffs such as rape so it will depend on the population of other deer.

Where they are in competition for browse with bigger deer they will find it harder. The small population I've seen in Sussex will be finding it extremely hard indeed as there is virtually no browse. Even the fallow have been reduced to feeding on hay with sheep which I've never seen before!

Oxfordshire and Berkshire - seem active but slower.

I don't have any fears for them - I do for fallow and roe.