Hi fellow Hiveians,
Today we spent some time feeding deer!
I'm Hungry, Deer
The zoo we went to recently was a lot more than a normal zoo visit for us. We got to spend time with the animals themselves instead of just watching them from afar!
The really great thing about interacting with animals, seeing them from afar but also being able to get into their enclosure and respect them as well as get some time to feed them and if possible, pet them. The deer enclosure was the first time we really got to ever do this! I think it's a fantastic way to get ourselves and kids into the habitat for them and spend some time looking at them up close and interacting with them.
Like any animal, when you feed them, they are a little aggressive to get more of the food! lol. The deer were pretty intense with being aggressive to eat as much food as possible. These adult deer were certainly not what I thought as far as how aggressive they were to eat whatever food we had. The little man was a little nervous to be there at some points but thankfully the deer were good about me blocking them to give the little man some space.
The little man was able to find a smaller group of deer to feed. I think in total there were about 40 deer in the enclosure that we could see. The adults were a lot more prevalent than the adolescents but off to the edges of the area were the adolescents looking to scrape up some food! They were a lot more hesitant to be around us versus the fully grown deer which was good. I don't know if all of the deer were born in captivity or not, next time we go there I think I'll ask them what the mix is. All born here versus captured for whatever reason.
One of the other things I wanted to make sure the little man got to do was spend some time actually petting the deer and getting to understand them and how they are pretty gentle and docile creatures. The deer were thankfully pretty calm if you gave them a little bit of corn, they would let you pet them for a moment until they were distracted going to hunt out some more food elsewhere lol.
Some of the bigger adults were a lot gentler than others. This one here was good about not being too aggressive in getting the food from the little man. They take the corn and chew it so fast it was in swallowing the stuff you could barely keep the corn in your hand lol. We are going to see what we can do to bring bits of our own corn next time we go to see if we can feed them a little cheaper. A quarter got you about a little less than two handfuls of the feed. Not terrible but when a 10 pound bag costs 8$ or something, it was definitely a good profit. Hopefully the money goes to taking care of the deer but I'm not sure.
This deer was definitely a lot more aggressive for a female, I was surprised. I believe it was a female, I don't see any antlers to differentiate it as a male but the females were for the most part more hesitant than the males to grab for food. This one was all over the place trying to snatch up some food! lol. Thankfully the deer were all very gentle with their teeth, I don't think anyone got bit and if I remember correctly, they don't really anticipate anyone getting bit with how their teeth are set up.
I got to spend some time myself feeding the deer! I was enjoying the experience and got to spend a little time myself experiencing it instead of just constantly deflecting the deer from being too aggressive with the little man lol
One of the things I really liked with this whole experience was getting into the enclosure to see the deer up close. I've only seen deer from afar or stuffed. It was really interesting to get to walk amongst them. I could tell how gentle they were as a species and that gave me a different appreciation of them.
With that though, I do also understand that it's important to hunt them. Some might find this brutal but part of being human is we do, in my opinion of course, need to have some type of meat consumption. I want to get to a point in the next couple of years to hunting them in some capacity. It's no guarantee that I can get one but being able to feed my family with a deer that I am able to kill myself will be a huge benefit. My wife doesn't eat meat herself but the little man does and I want to instill in him that being able to be self-sufficient in this manner as well as know that we do not take for granted these animals, is important to me for my lessons for him as he gets older. The animals are important and we need to respect them while at the same time use them for food and other things in life.
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