quote:


One common conclusion in most studies is nutrition has more to do with antler development than genes.

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ORIGINAL: SilverKype

Was that appropiate???

Where did I say genes don't play a role?  I didn't.  I never did.  Are you having a com-pre-hen-sion problem?  Read the sentence you quoted.

Thought so..

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Nutrition
Feeding behavior and digestive tract physiology of all deer species are indeed closely related!
The feeds normally consumed by cervids species are also the feeds they are best capable of
digesting!

Whitetails are called Concentrate Selectors because they "select" the more nutritious,
low fiber parts of vegetation, like leaves, fruit, and shoots.
This material is rapidly fermented in the rumen / reticulum; while a large portion of the plant
"Cell Contents" (sugars & soluble starch) is absorbed directly; without any fermentation at all!

Whitetails have stomach antimony adapted to utilize low fiber forage.
Their reticular groove is well developed which allows high quality feed to bypass rumen
fermentation.
All concentrate selectors have a relatively small rumen and omasum; which can get impacted
easily with poor quality, fibrous forage.

Concentrate selectors like whitetails have faster feed "passage rates", relatively larger distal
fermentation chambers (relatively larger hindguts) with greater emphasis on
hind gut fermentation" and less emphasis on "ruminal fermentation".

Whitetails have a relatively large Parotid Gland which secretes compounds that make it
possible for them to eat high levels of some secondary plant compounds like Tannins found in acorns and other browse.

Whitetails posses Proline rich salivary proteins that "bind" these tannins.

Additionally, whitetails and other concentrate selectors have proportionately bigger livers to
deal with the faster fermentation rates of the highly-digestible cell contents of the food they
"select". The large liver also helps to quickly detoxify the chemicals found in some of these
plants.

Voluntary feed intake will decrease as much as 40-60% in periods of severe heat-stress
and winter-cold.

Ingested energy in excess of Net energies of lactation, growth, and maintenance will be stored
as fat.

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Even where they are plentiful, agricultural crops may not address all of a deer’s nutritional needs. For example, assume you are managing a 250-acre farm.

You plant 75 of those acres in corn every year, and your neighbors are also primarily corn farmers. Sounds good doesn’t it?

Actually, it sounds like the recipe for undersized bucks, especially if the herd grows large enough to consume all the most desirable high-protein browse species.
When the herd wipes out the best browse each year, these plants may fail to grow back and will simply disappear. 

Furthermore, corn is low in protein.

In fact, it produces only 7 percent crude protein.
Deer do best on a much higher level, more than 20 percent is ideal.
Deer love corn even during the summer, but it is little more than the human equivalent of glazed donuts – certainly not body-builder food.

In areas with a lot of corn, there is the risk of a protein implosion when browse plants give out.

And during dry years, this is likely to occur even if you keep the herd in check.

Most importantly, deer need high-protein forage in the spring and early summer, well before corn can be utilized.

Here’s another scenario.

Assume you manage deer in an area with both soybeans and corn.

Your neighborhood has an abundance of both.

During the summer, soybean leaves are much higher in crude protein than corn plants (roughly 16 percent protein in some cases). Now the deer have some variety.

Once again, it sounds good doesn’t it?

Well, though bean leaves are higher in protein than corn, they fall well short of other possible forage plants in the legume family... namely Imperial Whitetail Clover, Alfa-Rack Plus, Chicory Plus and Extreme.

At their peak, these food plot products provide crude protein levels of 30 percent or higher.

And like corn, soybeans are not available during the spring and/or early summer and do not contribute to early antler development. 

So, obviously, if you are trying to produce a diet high in protein, simple row crops aren’t enough.


Then there is the problem that occurs after harvest.

The existence of commercial agricultural crops doesn’t automatically guarantee a year-around food source. Modern combines are so efficient that they leave little waste in the field after they pass.

Unless you have a low deer density, the deer will clean up all the waste grain long before spring green-up.

A lack of excellent nutrition will eventually force the deer to feed heavily on less desirable woody browse and forage such as grass.