Deer the Focus of OSU Extension Seminar

As a Master Gardener I am often asked about what to do about deer eating landscaping and what to use to discourage them. Dealing with the problem in my own yard and at the Woman’s Park, I am also searching for solutions. When I learned about the seminar on deer, I made sure I attended. It was sponsored by the Greene County Extension with presenter Marnie Titchnell of the OSU School of Environment and Natural Resources. She began by asking how many in the room had been involved in a vehicular accident with a deer. All 50 attendees raised their hands!

She explained that deer were extirpated from Ohio by 1911, reintroduced in 1923, and now number a record 650,000 in Ohio. As Ohio settlement replaced deep forest with farmed fields and then suburbs, these edge areas provided a lush smorgasbord for deer. Marnie explained 20 is the ideal number of deer per square mile for sustaining a herd without critical damage to the habitat. Currently, according to a study in Fairborn, we host 75 deer per square mile!

We learned that deer browse rather than eating in one place and will eat 500 different types of plants with each deer consuming 7-10 pounds of food a day. No wonder we can’t find plants they won’t eat! Well-fed females can become pregnant at 6 months but more likely at the age of two. They average 1.7 offspring a year – a large annual increase in herd size. And does outnumber bucks 8 to 1.

Marnie also addressed feeding deer and providing salt licks. This is not a good practice because sharing food at the same spot each day transmits deer diseases through saliva. The biggest threat is deer wasting disease that can spread to humans. I had heard this before but it was good to have confirmation from a researcher.

We received a good handout of plants deer are likely and unlikely to browse, available at http://njaes.rutgers.edu/deerresistance/. We learned a lot more about repellents, fencing, and other methods of exclusion and also about the major damage they are doing to future forests of Ohio. However, this will be material for an article in coming weeks.

Macy Reynolds, Greene County Master Gardener