1 8 DEER: THEIR HABITS 



open park ; they will fatten the bucks in the stall, but 

 if used in any quantity they will make the venison hard. 

 In feeding with hay, it is a good plan to spread some 

 on the ground in little locks, so that all may get some, 

 otherwise the old bucks will keep off the rascal deer 

 from the racks. In large cold parks, it is a good plan 

 to have an inner pen with roller bars like those used for 

 lambs, so that the fawns may go in and feed separately ; 

 these fawn gates will stop the male deer from going in . 

 This practice is much required on cold poor land : in 

 parks where few deer are kept, and the land is good, 

 they do not require so much care. It is the same with 

 deer as with sheep in some seasons, early spring grass 

 with white frost takes them off very quickly. The best 

 thing to prevent this is giving the fawns, particu- 

 larly, beans or maize early in the morning, as soon as 

 it is light ; this will prepare for foraging about in the 

 afterpart of the day, when what they pick up does 

 them good upon the dry food given in the morning. 

 Swede turnips are probably the best roots to be given 

 to deer, if cut in the same way as for sheep with Ran- 

 some's cutter, and thrown out of a cart with a shovel, 

 spreading them over a large area that all the deer may 

 get some. A ton of swedes cut up in this way, and 

 given to a herd of 500 deer, will help them very much 

 in dry frosty weather when there is nothing for them 

 to get but hay; the water must also be looked to, and 

 the ice broken night and morning ; animals require 

 much water in dry frosty weather. It is bad economy 

 to starve deer in winter, and all owners of stock have 

 found that if animals are worth keeping at all they are 

 worth keeping well. Under good management a small 

 herd of deer will not cost much to keep up, and noble- 

 men having deer parks do not look to it as a source of 

 profit, but rather as characteristics of dignity, and 

 formerly no nobleman was without one, and many a 

 small grievance on the part of a neighbour or tenant has 

 been drowned in the gravy of a haunch of venison. 

 Moreover, in the " good old times " it was a graceful 



