When it Pours...It Floods

What a week and it is only Tuesday. Last Thursday Cody found our 2nd largest breeder buck dead. He was fine the night before, running around, looking fine, and the next morning DEAD! We took him to the vet to do an autopsy and we won't get the results for a week or 2 but we think it was EHD, a disease that love white-tail deer and there is pretty much nothing you can do to stop it! Cody was sick. Well Sunday when we were doing our last walk through for the night we found a dead doe laying by the fence. We took her to the vet to for an autoposy and will know in a few weeks. Also, Yesterday Cody noticed 2 doe not looking good at all, so he darted both of them with antibiotics and crossed his fingers. Then this morning Cody noticed the 2 year old breeder buck acting weird so he darted it full of meds and said a little prayer. At lunch Cody went to check on them all again and the buck wasn't doing good at all. Cody called Mike Roach, (Thank goodness for this guy) He is a deer breeder that lives around here and has helped Cody out a lot, giving him extra remedies to try and answering any questions Cody has and just reassuring Cody that he is doing everything he can to take care of these deer. When Cody informed Mike that the buck is really sick and asked him what he thought about tranquilizing it and pumping him fool of fluids, antibiotics, and vitamins and of course it's the middle of the day, hot, and so not good to tranquilize a deer and Mike told Cody that and said he should do it tonight when it was cooler, but Cody was sure if they didn't do it right then he wouldn't last till tonight. Well Mike came running over here to help Cody, cause they needed to keep him cold (with a water hose) while he was under and check his temp etc and Mike would help. By the time Mike got here and they got all the meds in needles and went to give him his shots, he was already dead. Cody was sick! We took him to the vet and they just looked at us like "Really" another one! The vet said, "umm do ya'll have a way to dump the body when we are done because we don't" well they did the other day! If someone was paying me $300.00 a pop to dump a deer, BRING IT ON! Which it wasn't a big deal, it's just gross going to pick up a stinky deer after they have messed with it for a few hours! We went into town ran some errands for an hour or so and went to pick him back up to dispose of the body. When we got there the vet said this was the coolest thing ever. At first you look at us like "really" and now your telling us this is cool! Don't tell someone who just lost an expensive deer that this is "cool." Well apparantly they haven't seen anything like it before and it was super 'cool", they know he had pneumonia and said his insides looked really cool :( and maybe EHD but we will know in a few weeks for sure. Well I guess the vet won one today and we lost! At least we gave them something cool to do for the day...NOT!

While Mike was here, Cody showed him the 2 sick doe and they seemed to look a lot better. So we planned to tranquilize both tonight and pump them full of meds. We also decided to go ahead and pump big guy (our only other breeder buck left) full of antibiotics just in case, because it wouldn't hurt anything. When we get to the pens we see 1 doe hanging on for dear life. Cody runs to the house grabs about 6 different medicines, while he is loading them in needles he needed some fluids, so I run to the house, run back to the pens and when we go in to give it all the shots, she is already dead. Cody was sick! The other doe looked like she was doing about 45% better but we decided anyways to go ahead and tranq her and give her the appropriate meds to be on the safe side.

So tonight was super busy, it is 11:30 and Cody just got out of shower and relaxed! We had to bottle feed big girl, spray the pens (we are starting to do this everynight trying to fight EHD) bottle feed little girl and Cody's girl, and tranq a deer, which this was the first for Cody, all by himself! He did GREAT! He was super nervous and kind of shaking but he was GREAT! He shot the doe with some meds to put her out and she was out within 10 minutes. We sneak up to her, give her about 6 shots, antibiotics, B-12, EHD med, and a few others and then the reversal. She came out just fine. Cody just got back from checking on her and she got up, a little wobbly but hopefully she will come out of it.

Cody talked to Richard today (Jeff's financial advisor, confidante, friend, Great Guy) and Richard talked to a guy from Samson's Ridge which is a huge Game ranch in Illinois, I think, and he told Richard you can expect to lose at least 15% each year from EDH! So do you let EHD hit, let nature run its course and lose that 15%? Do you tranquilize them one at a time and pump them full of antibiotics and risk the chance of them dying from the stress and doing so in the Oklahoma heat? Do u run them through the shoots and pump them full of antibiotics and risk the chance of major stress (they are having babies or had babies and messing up their milk bags)? If you choose the risk and try to stop EHD, will you be ok with losing those to stress, but saving them from EHD? It's definitely a lose lose situation!

Karen