By Laura Wormuth
For Maryland crop producers, deer damage is more than a nuisance; it’s a critical issue that costs farmers millions of dollars in lost yield each year. To help growers protect their crops, University of Maryland Extension (UME) wildlife specialist Luke Macaulay developed The 4 Pillars of Managing Deer Damage, a comprehensive guide built on years of field research and producer interviews.
While placing a dollar value on deer damage is difficult due to variable effects on crops like fluctuating weather and soil conditions, Macaulay isolated the effect of deer by using deer exclosures to compare soybean production inside protected areas with fields in areas accessible to deer. “There is a lot of variability, but ultimately there are significant yield reductions in some of these situations, so it’s a real problem,” he said, “The losses are real – it’s substantial.”
Funded by the Maryland Soybean Board, Macaulay's research focused heavily on soybeans because they offer high-protein forage that deer crave. Indeed, a 150-pound deer can consume roughly 9 to 12 pounds of vegetation per day.
For a mature soybean plant, that amount of feeding may be manageable, but for a six-inch seedling, repeated grazing can quickly eliminate an entire area before the plants have a chance to establish themselves. “Soybeans are extremely resilient but if they get cut off below that first leaf, the plant dies – there’s no coming back,” Macaulay said.
Source : umd.edu