Whitetail deer give birth to one, sometimes two fawns. On rare ocassions, females will have three fawns at a time. Fawns are typically 6 to 8 lbs. at birth. The birth usually happens in mid to late spring, with the doe having carried the young fawn in pregnancy since the late fall breeding period the previous year.
Young fawns have reddish fur patterned with white spots. These spots help hide them from predators. The first few weeks of a young fawn's life is its most perilous and they have a high mortality rate. Young fawns are adept at remaining absolutely still in low brush or grass, as remaining unseen is their only defense against the variety of predators that hunt them.
Fawns lose these spots their first summer and will grow to be 50 to 70 pounds by their first winter. When deer populations are down, females are even sometimes ready to breed within their first year.
Thursday, January 03, 2008
Whitetail Deer - Fawn (Odocoileus virginianus)
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4 comments:
Last night (at 8:00 p.m. Minnesota time) I saw a deer followed closely by THREE fawns. I don't know much about deer, but this struck me as unusual. (That's why I'm online, googling deer.) Can a female deer carry three fetuses at once? Or will a female deer ever "adopt" a fawn whose mother has been killed?
I saw the deer in a suburb of Saint Paul, MN. They emerged from behind a house, crossed a quiet street at an angle, then disappeared into the back yard of another house. The neighborhood does have some woodsy areas and ponds, but I was still surprised to see them as they were at one point only a few yards from busy Hamline Avenue, down which police cars frequently race at 70-80 miles per hour. (There must be a station nearby.)
Oh - regarding the previous comment, the date when I saw the mother and three fawns was July 5, 2008.
More likely that the three fawns were siblings, but deer will "adopt" fawns. In fact, deer are relatively easy to tame, because a fawn will "adopt" a human too.
On that subject, a couple weeks ago I saw a fawn following a roller-blader down the street. The two were obviously connected to each other, because the roller-blader would look back, making sure the fawn was keeping up. And the fawn would stay consistently within 10-20 feet.
Did you draw this picture?
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