Deer stumps and salt

[Tinbucket]

Someone told me to put a salt block on a stump and the deer would eat it up over time.I put salt blocks on two stumps last year and they fed on them heavily but heavy rains washed much of the salt into the ground around the stumps. One stump is a mess the other has a neat ring of clay dirt around what is left of the stump..
When the deer are on the salt they will look at you and go on feeding.
On corn I put out for the generally they trot off if they see you.
I can't really characterize how the deer are, on the salt, but it like they are so addicted to it they don't care that you are there or a potential threat
One fawn, still in spots, this spring is even half way friendly.
I'm just using the fifty pound blocks of salt with minerals that look kinda like dark clay.
What do you suppose attracts the like that? It is kinda like a bob cat on catnip sometimes.

[Scorch]

Animals use a lot of salt to develop and function normally. Same for cattle and goats, they will get on a salt block and not move until they are ready to.

[Mobuck]

Let me guess, you're not in an area where there's a livestock salt/mineral feeder on every 40 acres.

[Sure Shot Mc Gee]

Feeding deer in any form during the warm months can bring about CWD. Best time to help your deer is during the cold winter months. Not with salt but with a bag of deer chow or a bale of alfalfa hay occasionally. (Problem with to much alfalfa given a deer will bloat with gas.)

[Lucas McCain]

Sure Shot McGee

I am interested as to how deer can get CWD because they can get feed when it is warm. Would you explain that please? With all the available feed in their area I wouldn't think a deer would even come to a feed station.

[jmr40]

If a single deer is infected it can spread the disease to others that it comes in contact with. Deer "normally" spread out and don't hang around in large groups. Putting out food, salt etc. brings deer together making it much easier for the disease to be spread to many more animals.

Same principle as wanting people with the flu to stay home. If they try to show up at work or school they spread the flu to many more people.

[Mobuck]

"I am interested as to how deer can get CWD because they can get feed when it is warm. Would you explain that please? With all the available feed in their area I wouldn't think a deer would even come to a feed station." weather isn't really a factor--deer come to feeders year round
" Putting out food, salt etc. brings deer together making it much easier for the disease to be spread to many more animals." correct

The disease can be spread by nose to nose contact or simply picking up the prions from surfaces. "Concentrating" deer by using feeders or simply salt/mineral licks contributes to the spread.
North Missouri's deer herd has been decimated by CWD that was most likely transmitted by nose to nose contact through the high wire fence of an enclosure at a "put and take" hunting operation.

[T. O'Heir]

A salt block on a stump would be visited by every beast, all his brothers and their cousins. It also illegal in some places. Corn, they can get in season just like we can.
Mind you, a salt block isn't feeding Bambi and all his friends. All of 'em eat 12 months a year too.
Feeding deer in summer doesn't cause CWD, but it can spread it, as mentioned. Biggest issue with feeding in summer is that Bambi will get used to being fed.

[Ridgerunner665]

I've been giving them mineral blocks for years with no problems.... Trophy Rock is good stuff and they really like it.

I tried feeding them too, but all I fed during the warm months were raccoons.... The deer didn't want the feed when there was plenty of forage available... I no longer feed them at all.

[Ridgerunner665]

Maybe Tennessee deer are different.... But with or without mineral sites they still hang out in groups, sometimes very large groups.

I understand the concept of feeders spreading CWD, but I believe the actual effect is somewhat over stated.

Deer are fairly social animals... Even bucks hang out in groups for part of the year.

[Armed_Chicagoan]

Originally Posted by Sure Shot Mc Gee

Problem with to much alfalfa given a deer will bloat with gas

Same with horses... when I was a kid we had an old quarter horse which used to be a bulldogger's horse in rodeos. It got out of the corral and into a neighboring alfalfa field and gorged itself. It came back and died next to the fence it had got out of. : (

[Mobuck]

I've seen deer flocking into alfalfa and clover fields(both are legumes that can cause bloating in ruminants) to feed and have never seen a bloated deer as a result.

[Blindstitch]

I've been using salt and other minerals in Northern Michigan for 25 years and haven't had any problems. It is funny to see how it attracts everything in the forest for a lick or two.

Once in one week I had a cow moose visit and the neighbors cow that got loose.

[Dufus]

We have been using the salt blocks and mineral blocks and sometimes a grain block since the late 50s for cattle and wildlife. Never used a stump tough. We just rolled them out of the truck and left them on the ground.

[Tinbucket]

Along the lines of diseases. I don't raise cattle but remember a hint that some salt blocks contained such things as deterrents to horn flies and ticks, and some antibiotics.
Anyone know anything on this.

[langenc]

I guess one could put most anything in the salt block, kinda like the potatoes in the Army.

[Art Eatman]

Some info about salt blocks:

https://www.lakelandfeedmill.com/Articles.asp?ID=132

[buck460XVR]

Originally Posted by Ridgerunner665

Maybe Tennessee deer are different.... But with or without mineral sites they still hang out in groups, sometimes very large groups.

I understand the concept of feeders spreading CWD, but I believe the actual effect is somewhat over stated.

The idea is that salt licks and feeders make the deer feed of the ground, the same small piece of ground day after day after day, year after year. The prions that cause CWD supposedly can live for decades in the ground. Also when multiple deer feed from the same small spot, the odds of nose to nose contact is high, and nose to nose contact is supposedly another method of transmission. Since deer are browsers, even when in large groups like wintering areas(deer yards) that incidence is much less.

Originally Posted by Mobuck

I've seen deer flocking into alfalfa and clover fields(both are legumes that can cause bloating in ruminants) to feed and have never seen a bloated deer as a result.

This^^^. Again, being browsers, unlike horses that are grazers, deer do not fill their stomachs with one forage. Horses also have stomachs that are meant to process large quantities of low nutritional forage. Thus eating high quantities of high nutritional alfalfa, can cause bloat. That's why they are generally fed "Horse Hay".

[Mobuck]

Not much can be done about CWD since there's no treatment and no preventative.
It might be possible to prevent/reduce the transmission or contracting EHD by using salt blocks as the application tool but the effect of randomly treating some but not all deer would allow such diseases to stay in the herd.
With that in mind, I doubt the bunny cops would spring for the cost as those guys get paid regardless of whether there's 1 deer or 100 deer in a given area.

[buck460XVR]

Originally Posted by Mobuck

Not much can be done about CWD since there's no treatment and no preventative.

With that in mind, I doubt the bunny cops would spring for the cost as those guys get paid regardless of whether there's 1 deer or 100 deer in a given area.

Many biologists here have come to the conclusion that CWD has been around for much longer than most folks think. Only the increase in captive animals, higher densities in most areas than historically, due to creations of AG lands, intentional feeding and adaptivness(is that a word?) of the deer themselves and the idea of letting them go and letting them grow. CWD is generally a disease of older animals and sometime takes 18 months to manifest. Was a time not too long ago where the average deer's age was only 18 months. Now we let bucks age and mature for horn and we restict the amount of antlerless deer shot. We also micromanage deer herds so we have heavy concentrations of them in small areas. All of this leads to higher transmission rates. Folks are also spending much more time in the woods and observing deer actively, thus seeing sick animals. Again, the only prevention there is right now is to reduce the amount of close contact between animals and the proper disposal of infected animals, and their carcasses. Biologist hope that the deer themselves will become more immune to the disease as they have in the past to others due to evolution.

And yes, it would be impossible to individually treat wild animals for the disease. Bunny cops or not.

[Art Eatman]

About midnight one night on a backroad highway north of Sanderson, Texas, I slowed way down for deer in the road. And in both borrow ditches alongside. A rough count was way above fifty. That's desert country.

On my way back from Luckenbach to Austin one evening, I stopped to count deer in an oat patch of maybe five acres: I counted to somewhere north of a hundred. Little bitty critters.

When I moved back to the small family ranch outside of Austin, I went jeeping around one night, spotlighting from general curiosity. It was jaw-dropping to run up a count of some fifty pairs of deer eyes. That was in an area of maybe a hundred acres of our land.

Damfino. If over-crowding is a cause, Texas oughta be overwhelmed with CWD deer, seems like.

[Blindstitch]

Wisconsin just opened up 15 counties to baiting which has been closed due to CWD for many years.

[reynolds357]

My experience with salt is that deer are addicted to it in the summer but pay it no attention in the cool weather.

[dahermit]

If over-crowding is a cause, Texas oughta be overwhelmed with CWD deer, seems like.

CWD has to be already in the deer herd for overcrowding to be a problem. Michigan had no CWD until it was introduced by deer that were shipped to a game farm from out West. Overcrowding does not cause CWD, it just helps it to spread.

[johnwilliamson062]

The exact method of feeding or administering salt blocks has an effect on how dangerous it is.

Use of the PVC gravity feeders is very bad as it often puts two or more deer in direct nose to nose contact. Broadcasting feed over an area not so bad.

The mineral blacks are usually water soluble. Place one or two in a 50 gallon drum until dissolved and then pour that somewhere. Enough of the mineral will stay in the ground the deer will be digging it up all season. Alternatively, place one high up in a tree so the minerals are brought down in the rain. By spreading the mineral over a larger area nose to nose contact is reduced.

If you use salt realize you are substituting salt for lots of minerals. It is not good for the deers health and will likely effect the size of their racks as they need other minerals to form the horns. If you leave a Morton salt block in an easily accessible area they will not forage for the other minerals.