Are nutritional adaptations of wild deer relevant to commercial venison production$

This article emphasizes the nutritional management of farmed deer rather than of herded or hunted deer. The objectives of supplemental feeding of farmed deer vary widely and include taming and controlling animals, increasing productivity, improving product quality, increasing carrying capacity, bridging seasonal pastures, improving pasture utilization, and correcting nutrient or mineral deficiencies. When the cervid industry emerged in the 1970s, naturalistic information on ecology and nutrition of wild deer provided a basis for selecting areas for fencing and designing feeding programs and diets. However, deer were found to be adaptable and responded well to intensive management. Growing dependence on improved pastures led to attempts to shift natural metabolic cycles to match pasture growth or to ensure larger (older) calves for fall auctions. Seasonality of production, a characteristic of temperate deer, became viewed as an obstacle to developing markets that seemed to require a year-round supply of fresh product. However, as product values replace speculative values and as product values stabilize, attention will turn to costs of production and to discovering and more fully capturing the natural advantages of the industry. One possible way is to turn seasonal metabolic cycles into an advantage, reducing seasonal maintenance costs rather than encouraging off-season growth. To the same end, interests may turn to co-production and co-marketing of deer and other native and domestic herbivores.