Fallow Dear Fawn

This very young fallow deer fawn was brought to us after being found trapped in a wire fence and had been separated from her mum. Thankfully she arrived in reasonable shape, the wound isn’t too deep, it’s clean and not infected, so it’s been cleaned and treated with a topical antibiotic.

Deer often hide their young whilst they go off to feed and well intentioned people pick them up, thinking they have been abandoned, in these cases and wherever possible, we should always aim to put them back as the mum will return if not left more than 24 hours, then they will have the greatest chances of survival. With this female, we decided this was not the best course of action due to her injury and the fact we didn’t know how long she had been separated from her mum.

Fawn’s are hard to rear, they get very stressed and it is very, very important to ensure they do not get imprinted by humans, so we put several measures into place to reduce stress and reduce the risk of imprinting as a tame deer stands little chance in the wild.

24 hours from admission, thankfully she is feeding from the bottle, toileting and even having a nibble on hawthorn and bramble, she won’t though be weaned until she is around 10 weeks old so there’s a long way to go.