Scottish Rock Garden Club Forum
Bulbs => Bulbs General => Topic started by: Lvandelft on May 04, 2009, 10:13:10 PM
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Some weeks ago I made a posting in the topic Wildlife about the damages
of deer in bulb fields.
As a reaction I received here from bulb growers who suffered under this plague
some pictures they made near the place they are living and working.
I made a new topic about because it is easier to find later and hope I made it on the right place.
I copied the posting a made before too and send the picture I made then too.
Here first the original posting with my picture:
We are living in the Dutch bulb district, which area runs merely along the dunes.
In the dunes wildlife is originally limited to birds rabbits and other small animals,
but through people fox and roe deer were brought in.
As the area where they live is limited it is obviously that they get over-populated.
So they come out of the dunes seeking for food and logically they come than into the bulb fields.
A big part of the dunes are managed by the City of Amsterdam,
and the magistrates there, are against shooting (for political reasons).
And they don’t want to compensate the damage to the growers either.
This is going on for years now and the damage gets more and more.
I show a picture of a tulip field where in winter the roe deer
were at work during the night.
In front of the picture you see the fence to keep them out
and since a few weeks gardeners are allowed to make electric fencing round their fields too.
The growers are now also allowed to shoot two animals per day but only during day light.
These smart animals come always when it is dark….. ::) ::) ::)
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The following pictures speak for themselves
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My goodness... such a large number of deer, so bold in broad daylight :o No wonder such terrible damage is being done to the bulb crops. :'(
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Perhaps these are happy enough in daylight to encourage the bulb growers to shoot them legally? They all look very plump and well fed. It must be heartbreaking for the growers to see their stock of bulbs be devastated like this.
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Can the people who brought the deer in be charged, or made
to remove them?
We need 2.5m fences as our deer can jump over any lower ones.
Luckily we don't have herds of deer, just small families.
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A pair of weeks ago I saw 8 dears on my field (meadow) but they never aproximates house un bulb plantings as I have dog running free around day and night, summer and winter only outside (scottish sheep dog - colly). I had damage on leaves only occasionally from hares, but never from elks, dears, roe. But in soviet time there were some large nurseries - they surrounded fields with 2.5 m high fence - just against dears.
Janis
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Perhaps these are happy enough in daylight to encourage the bulb growers to shoot them legally? They all look very plump and well fed. It must be heartbreaking for the growers to see their stock of bulbs be devastated like this.
In our area these animals are protected. (they don't belong here originally, though)
After talking many years to the magistrats the growers are now allowed to shoot up to two deer per day but only when it is dark... ::) ::)
In daylight passing people might get shocked.
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In my village garden, Muntjac deer are a problem. These are small deer, about the size of dog, but they love to eat both the emerging leaves and the buds of tulips, also cyclamen leaves. After a problem at the beginning of the year, raising the height of the fence and plugging any small gaps seems to have kept them out.
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Luit these are the animals that make Swedes by Tulip as cut flowers since they eat our tulips in the garden unless measures are taken. They are at least afraid of people as they are hunted to some degree (not by the gardeners) but by the one that owns the forrests besides the gardens.
Wild animals should be wild and hence afraid of humans and this is only done by hunting. What about using electric fences used for cattels maybe less ugly and still effective? This is sometimes used in Sweden to keep gardens free from them. It is not harming the animals but the feel when they touch it. Maybe if used in 3 lines of height it will work?
Hope they have a population that works well without causing traffic accidents and such.
All the best
Joakim
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The problem is that people today live isolated from nature and farm life. To them an animal is 'Bambi' with no connection to leather shoes and beef on the table. The lack of hunters and lack of natural predators like wolf, bear and lynx means that the deer proliferate extensively.
We used to have only the odd moose. (Alces alces) However, then the roe deer made its appearance (Capreouls capreolus) We have seen over a dozen in the same day. In Stockholm suburbs they roam as if they were cats. They are evil creatures that always eat the most ornamental plants first.
My neighbour has recently got a small herd of red deer (Cervus elaphus) that kills the newly planted firs (Picea excelsa) Last year I saw a fallow deer (Dama dama the one in the pictures) some 8 km to the north. This means that I have all wild deer except the reindeer (Rangifer tarandus) in the immediate neighbourhood. The reindeer is of course a domestic animal in Sweden.
Electric fences will keep them out if at sufficiently many levels. You need three wires.
The problem is that one must keep down vegetation below so that nothing shortcircuits the fence.
I have been using "Chicken net" 180cm high on wooden stakes spaced 4m. It is cheap but ugly. It works well.
In the more visible places I train Rhododendron catawbiense 'Roseum Elegans' to it. That one will root from low branches so I have a cheap supply of it.
We are now getting wild boar and I need to fence a much larger area. That will be electric but will take time and money to accomplish. I really need to get up half a km.
Then comes the problem with gates for cars. :(
Göte.
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Göte,
Can you buy automatic gate openers over there? Here we can buy electric powered ones, or solar operated ones, that you either activate with an electronic beeper (like you have for disarming your car alarm etc) or a push button on a post that you can activate while still seated in your car. That way you can still open the gate without actually having to get out of the car, which is particularly nice in nasty weather. I don't know if these sorts of things exist outside of Aus or not, but I would imagine that they at least do in larger farming areas in other parts of the world? Unfortunately they are never cheap though. ::)
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Paul the automatic doors exists but cost more than the rest of the fence does all together. I think that is the point.
The animals use the gate if it is a normal that one forgets to close. I have seen the tracks.
The cheep solution is to put the wires there as well and then take the treads of. Exists for fences to keep in horses and is relyable and cheap but not funny when raining.
Paul the automatic ones have to cope with snow (in Sweden) so they are needed to be sturdier than normal and are not common at all in Sweden. Garage openers we have but not gate openers.
Chicken fence is OK in a wooden landscape but for the open landscape of the bulb fields I would say that electrical fence looks better and if some barrier is put under, the grass will be less of a problem. More work and money with barrier so maybe just cutting the grass will be easiest.
All the best.
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Absolutely I agree.
Gates of this type are indeed expensive.
If one is in a bulb field it is easy to keep the wires from touching the vegetation. Electric fences are also cheaper than net as long as it is more than a few meters. Also they are less ugly.
I have been using net up to now because of the difficulty in keeping wires away from vegetation and also because I do not have a power outlet nearby.
Göte.
PS
The mice has found my corydalis and destroyed a few I trapped one today and one yesterday.
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Thank you all for your kind replies.
I am sure that when growers read your reactions from all over the world, it will give them
some feelings of being supported .
After reading the replies this week I thought it being useful to show you the measures taken until now.
As it is not far from my living I had a look at the situation there and made some pictures
The first pic. shows how the growers tried to stop the deer coming into their fields.
That this fence is not strong enough is to see on the second one.
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Here I show pictures of the fencing made nearby next to an important traffic road.
The growers asked many times to make this fence longer but this was not done,
because the authorities did not find it important enough.
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After long negotiations with several authorities the village where the most growers are living,
decided to invest in a temporary electric fence.
There are 5 wires of which 3 are electric.
A part of this fence is almost not visible from the road, because placed in a nature
area behind trees, with some small gates for walkers in the area.
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That this fence is not strong enough is to see on the second one.
That I get away with chicken net is because the deer have elsewhere to go. If they really wanted to they could break through - at least a moose could. To be safe, I have, however, strengtened the fence by having barbed wire supporting the top edge on the backside where it is not seen and wooden laths in many places elsewhere.
Göte
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Luit, some friends in the States swear by human hair. Of course for normal/small plots, not valid for large estates. They hang plastic mesh bags with human hair, but this must not be Claudia Schiffer's so to speak, but hair that has not been washed for several days. Fortunately we do not have the deer problem here so can not tell by myself. What they do is to place such bags in a few spots where the wind would carry the "aroma" to the deer, that has an extremely fine sense of smell.
Nothing is lost with trying, specially since the ingredients are so cheap.
best
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Thank you for this Alberto, I will pass this on to a grower I know there.
Never heard of it, but can imagine that it makes sense.
The making of provisoric fencing a problem for cyclists too. (there are in weekends thousands of them in this particular area.)
I show some pictures of a special road for cyclists.
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Well, they say it works well.
I was thinking of the expense of millions (?) of gulden in fences (that deer can clear!) against a few cents of dirty hair and some discarded vegetable mesh bags.
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Well, they say it works well.
I was thinking of the expense of millions (?) of gulden in fences (that deer can clear!) against a few cents of dirty hair and some discarded vegetable mesh bags.
All sorts of smelly things have been recommended against deer in my country. They rarely work. However, someone has his pet plant eaten by a deer and puts something up. Since the deer has already eaten it doesn ot come back and this is then attributed to whatever was put up.
My wife sprayed the crocuses in our lawn with one of those mixtures. next morning 80% were eaten. My experience and I am very far from alone in this is that only A pet wolf, A good gun or a fence helps.
Even wolf's urine has been tried. First the deer avoid it - then they learn that there is no wolf and ignore it.
To rely on smells against deers or rodents is to court disaster. Fritillaria imperialis is said (by vendors) to keep voles away. Well I had a mixed planting of that and various Lilium c-c distance of bulbs about 15 cm. The voles destroyed all lilies and left the Fritillarias.
We must also keep in mind that the situation is different in different countries. In the Dutch bulb-areas there are few forests where the deer have a natural habitat. In the US the deer can roam and it is easier to keep them out.
Göte
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The question is: have YOU tried dirty human hair? I can not tell by myself but those that use it say it works. I have no personal reasons to recommend it or bring it down as we have no deer here, but I imagine the logic behind it is that a human is hiding among the shrubs (from the deer point of view).
Urine is obviously to degrade after a short time and go into the air, same for other odours. What they say is that deer avoid getting into an enclosure where they sense human "scent".
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Alberto if the animals are hunted hard by humans I believe it works but if the animals are not hunted and even shows no fear of humans that they can see, since they are not hunted at the bulb fields they have no reason to be scared of human hair.
Smelly things seem to make them chose other food if they have easy access to it but if no other food is available I doubt it works. So if one have some of the tulips protected by stinky things they would be left alone and the deers would eat the other tulips.
We have tried a lot of mixes with some success but never a whole protection just a selected. If they are hungry they eat regardless of what is surrounding the tulips.
If they have much other options and are hunted harder so that they are afraid of humans then I believe it might work but since they are not hunted (yet) in the bulb fields and they even eat at daytime I doubt that it would work.
As Göte says there has been a lot of tests in Sweden and only a few is working and only if there is alternatives for the animals to eat. This question is very often up in several Swedish forums so I base this not only on my own experience.
Kind regards
Joakim
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Thanks Joakim. I see the point; apparently in the States deer are hunted on a regular basis and run away from humans. Again, all I can say is mention the tip in the hope that it would be of some help.
Regards
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- Not in the U.S. but next door to it.
Our suburban deer are not afraid of people. I pick berries on one side of the bush
and a deer is browsing on the other side of the same bush.
Maybe I should not wash my hair so often.