Or hopefully CWD. I feed about 40 deer a day, twice a day and they are at high risk of getting chronic wasting disease misfolded prions. I don't consume the deer but CWD can be passed from urine and feces so I wear dedicated shoes specifically for the purpose of feeding them and sterilize them with chemicals and UV light.
Every single game jurisdiction that has confirmed cases of CWD or confirmed cases of CWD nearby has instituted baiting/feeding bans. The predominate reason for this is because prions can be spread through bodily fluids, including saliva, which can be passed from animal to animal when they share a common feeding source. Making corn piles and letting them eat off of that could spread CWD instead of preventing it. If you truly want to feed these deer, plant food plots. Turnips, sugar beets, and pumpkins will keep them fed through deep winter. Prions cannot be killed, not with fire or chemicals, so your sanitizing routine is pointless.
Every single game jurisdiction that has confirmed cases of CWD or confirmed cases of CWD nearby has instituted baiting/feeding bans.
Agreed but it is not banned in my area. The game warden does discourage it for the reasons you mentioned but the real undocumented reason is they don't want the obligation of paying for running a deer/elk food pantries. They do have a few of them for the elk. There are about 100 elk not far from me that they feed whereas I only have two elk on my property. I create N+2 piles of food to minimize saliva swapping but they do still move each other around at the start of winter. After a couple of weeks they stop swapping and fighting and the ones that have been here before don't even start with the swapping.
The plants you mention do not grow here in the winter outside of a greenhouse. People here that can afford to do so feed them pellets. On the other side of my county all the deer are dying because nobody is feeding them.
Never feed corn to deer, especially during the winter. It will give them diarrhea and dehydrate them. If you see someone feeding them corn try to get them to stop and use nutrient dense pellets and occasionally some oats to assist their digestion.
> The plants you mention do not grow here in the winter outside of a greenhouse
You're right, they don't. That's why you plant them in the late summer, with a mix of kale, chicory, rape, and other brassicas. The deer and elk eat the greens above ground right up until snowfall and then they dig the turnips and beets out of the ground over the winter as needed. They usually leave the pumpkins for last, but come late January they'll eat every last one.
The deer migrate away from here during the summer. I would have to plant them up in the mountains which I am not opposed to doing if they give me permission. That might be a fun little project and an excuse to do some off-roading.
My corn piles are only for squirrels, coons, beavers, possums, and squatches, and are clearly labeled as such. Any deer, found engorging itself on my corn, will be shot.
I'm not sure what the risk of spontaneous CWD development in deer is (extremely low?), but I'm also not sure that your sterilization protocol is sufficient either.
> Prions cannot be destroyed by boiling, alcohol, acid, standard autoclaving methods, or radiation. In fact, infected brains that have been sitting in formaldehyde for decades can still transmit spongiform disease [1]
How do you spot a diseased animal, and what's your protocol for dealing with it?
How do you spot a diseased animal, and what's your protocol for dealing with it?
It's tricky because the symptoms may not manifest for up to a year and sometimes even longer. This time of year is extra tricky because I get deer that show up late in winter and are emaciated from a lack of food, but it could also be disease. If I suspect a deer is infected I call the game warden and they would come out to put it down and get the lymph nodes tested. There is no other way. Thus far I have not had to do this. The only deer I have lost thus far was one that for sure was starving for too long in the hills and took too long to find his way to me and several last year that played chicken in the highway but that has stopped since I started feeding them twice a day.
I could actually see formaldehyde preserving the prions. I am curious what ph of acid they used. I would be surprised if the bleach I use does not decompose the prions but maybe I have been going through the wrong process all this time. If you can suggest a better procedure I will look into it. I'm not worried about ruining boots.
I forgot to add, the reason I know the 3 emaciated deer are not in that condition from disease but rather from malnutrition is that 2 of them are making a recovery. One was too far gone.
Maybe. [1] I have several Protease in capsule form and consume them daily. I would imagine that would have to be made into a paste to work on the boots.
Honestly I think bleach is fine. There is nothing inherently special about prions. They are just proteins and bleach will rapidly disassemble and denature proteins of any kind out of their 3D structure, some slower than others. I leave it on over night and with heat applied.
They are not overpopulated here. The weather has been killing them off in droves. They are not pests here at all. There are natural predators here but we try to keep their numbers down. The biggest predator this year has been the snow, ice and wind. The pests here are coyotes and yellow bellied marmots. The bigger predators stay further up the mountains unless there is a drought.
I can find no evidence of a protein that can survive bleach. Please cite sources of proteins that can survive heated bleach for extended periods of times. The sources will need to include the concentration of sodium hypochlorite, the temperature and the length of time the proteins were saturated.
