Since this is their first time being ran through the chutes we knew we were going to have our hands full. And we did. Cody's tame girl was not helping the situation, lol. When we're trying to herd them out of their pen to the alley way, Cody's girl stayed with us the whole time and all the other ones were looking at us like "what is going on, and why is that fawn hanging out with y'all!" We finally got all but 2 out and decided to just leave them in, they were doe and the doe were going back in that pen anyways. It took forever to actually get them all the way down by the chutes, they were going CRAZY! Cody went first to just see how far they would go down, they didn't go far before all 18 turned and started running straight towards me, I almost peed in my pants, I threw myself against the wall of the 10 ft gap they were running through and they all passed me. If these were adult deer, believe me, I would not have been standing there in the first place. Since they were just fawns, it was only a little scary.
Cody finally got his girl down there too and he had to push her to get her down there, it was funny and sad at the same time. They were hitting fences and trying to jump over with out any luck, luckily there were no broken bones yet. Cody ran the first one through, Luis dropped the floor, I covered the head, and Cody changed out the tag, Luis brought the floor back up and she ran back to her pen, success! 1 down 17 more to go! The next one was a male, changed out the ear tag, let him go, and after we let him go we realized, CRAP, that was a male and off he goes in the female pen, CRAP! We will get him later. The next one was Hannah's girl. She is still very tiny. Cody had to open the covered chute, get in with her and pick her up and place her in normal chute, poor girl, she never had an ear tag so Cody had to pierce her ear, poor little girl, she did good and we let her go. This has taken probably 30 minutes, it's fast paced, our adrenaline is pumping 90 to nothing. Cody pushed the next one through, Luis dropped the floor, I covered her head, and she was kicking 90 miles an hour! Luis had to lay on top of her so she wouldn't jump out. Cody tagged her ear, we let her out. When she ran out, her leg was broke. I looked in the chute and when Luis dropped the floor, the chute didn't go all the way down, so the last kick, she kicked a piece of metal. Luckily no bone was showing, so we didn't have to amputate it. There are a lot of things to do when working a deer and 3 people doing it is kind of stressful. We looked at the chute and realized the fawns weren't big enough to push that metal down on their own just yet, so we decided to just run the rest through to separate and not risk the chance of another leg break. We have to work them in the Spring and can change out their ear tags then, that way they will be bigger and not break a leg :( It took forever but we got them separated, except for that one. He was one of the last ones born so he won't be trying to breed :) When we got home, we were exhausted. We both felt like we had been run over by an 18- wheeler. Which deer temperament is about the same as an 18- wheeler!
Today Dr. Mauzzeral came out to draw more semen off our 2 biggest breeder bucks. They got one done successfully but the other one wasn't cooperating and wouldn't go down. Probably because the buck has done this before and didn't want to be violated again! They will be back out next Friday to try again. We also got her to look at the fawn with the broken leg. I felt SO much better about getting a second opinion and she agreed with Cody, leave it alone and it will heal, you can do more damage by interfering than you could by letting nature do its thing. Still, glad she looked at it though!
Here is bigboy before they gave him the reversal!
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