Talked to ranch manager today in Dimmit co. (Cotulla area) and he said he's never found so many dead yearlings in the 20yrs. he's been on the ranch.....Sooooo sad!! Dayum drought!!! Survival of the fittest? Nature's culling procedure?

Wonder if it's taking the same toll on piglets....

We can only hope, but I doubt it since they have more food choices.

Piglets(AKA ranch cockroaches)will survive a nuculear holocost...lol

aaww...so sad.
Our home is way off the road and surrounded by hardwoods. I put a big water trough on the other side of the fence next to our faucet. I have regular visitors every morning and evening. I have seen so many babies and young bucks in velvet.

A lot of areas are going to see that if there are not good water sources. I would like to see it take out some aoudad

i've heard that when it's like this that the does will just leave the fawns to die cause they know there's not enough food to support them... and no i don't have a source just something my dad told me.

Rule #1, Dad is always right.

I believe it, momma will kick baby off to save herself.

well i knew that dad is never wrong it's impossible

From what I have seen a doe will put a lot into raising fawns in a drought. In times like this one will be larger than the other twin due to the doe only having so much milk. She will either leave one to die or it gets weka and dies from lack of milk anyway. If it continues to stay dry and not much feed and the doe is getting drug down trying to raise the or a single fawn she will leave it to keep herself from dieing. If she did die trying to raise the fawn it would starve to death soon after anyway. Just natures way of trying to insure that the adult deer will live and breed this fall to raise another crop of fawns next year.

Water is not a prob on my place. Keep the tanks pumped full....

man i have always wanted to put a pump on our tank

but it's not only water it's also a lack of natural food source

I saw the first fawn this weekend in Val Verde County. It is so bad cedar trees are dying.

I saw that on 281 south, from Stephenville to Lampasas looks OK,Burnet to canyon lake it looks really bad,cedars dying and all.

I made a trip around the Hill Country from around Llano to Cherokee to San Saba to Kerrville to Bandera to Tarpley to Hunt and saw very few fawns except along the Guadalupe River around Hunt on Saturday and Sunday. Deer looked ok for body condition but not in as good as shape as normal...bucks were behind in growth. Water situation is really bad on many ranches I was on. Oak trees looked very bad to really good in the areas I was in. Cedars looked stressed but ok. No mast crop showing on any trees at all. Low browse was in bad shape due to high livestock numbers in the past months, high WT numbers or exotics on some ranches. Mesquite beans were saving ranchers in some areas for livestock and deer. Seco Creek was not flowing for the most part anywhere I crossed it and only water was behind dams on the creek. The Sabinal River was dry almost everywhere except behind dams. Other rivers were way down but still had some flow. For the most part rocks seemed to be doing well in the drought this year though.

I did some fishin on the cibolo creek last night just for kicks, caught a few small bass and pearch. I was shocked at how slow the creek is, it has stopped flowing in a couple places I have never seen before. Also their are alot of animals browsing the vegetation growing along the waters edge, looks bad everywhere.

matt

A lot of our yearlings have been lost due to almost zero groundcover for em to hide in....predators are thriving and we do a lot of control on that but still...and yes the mesquite beans have been a blessing!!

I was very worried about our fawn crop this year. One of my guys was down at the ranch this past weekend and said he saw quite a few fawns. Good news. I hope they make it through August.