Roe eating corn?

Antonyweeks

Well-Known Member
QUick one - walking through a local field of corn just wondered why some stalks apparently were eaten! Has anyone else experienced this? I didn't think they ate much corn or damaged crops in this way? The cuts on the stalks were all about 3ft up the stems. I couldn't see much evidence of slots etc though. There are no other deer around here - only roe. Well, at least I've always thought so.
 

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Corn no longer on the cob, I’m guessing; corn for many English farmers: wheat; for Scots farmers: oats.
A-maize-balls, or a-maiz-ing(estion) :coat:
 
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I agree the amount of damage badgers will do is often underestimated. When there are larger deer species in the area they seem to get blamed for all the damage when it ofter is not the case, some and some. Recently watched a red spiker cleaning velvet off on Maze, never seen that before.
 
QUick one - walking through a local field of corn just wondered why some stalks apparently were eaten! Has anyone else experienced this? I didn't think they ate much corn or damaged crops in this way? The cuts on the stalks were all about 3ft up the stems. I couldn't see much evidence of slots etc though. There are no other deer around here - only roe. Well, at least I've always thought so.
Muntjac eat apples.....

20210813_201705[1].jpg20210813_201550[1].jpg
 
I've sat and watched herds of fallow eat maize many times but badges also damage maize by pushing it over to eat the cobs
 
On this estate most deer damage to maize is done by them laying up for the day in it. Badgers certainly seem to eat it on the cob more than the deer do.
However, when flailed off at the end of the season, every deer in the parish turn up eat the remnants.
 
Badgers will flattern large areas of standing maize. I have never seen demonstrable roe damage. Other problems are greys squirrels which will plunder maize when it is ripe.

D
 
Fallow bed in it I know and flatten areas to do so mainly right in the heart of the crop ,bucks use it to clean antlers ,if you had fallow you’d know about it .
However deer don’t bite as such and that looks like a clean cut ,deer tend to hold and pull and are messy eaters .No sign of that under the pics you provided .
 
Yes the cut was pretty clean although some of the surrounding leaves were messy. I think there is badger damage but this tends to be on the ground. Not sure what cropped these stems (and there were 20 or more like this) at this height? Bit of a mystery!
 
It looks like fallow damage, exactly what we get up here when fallow set up camp in a crop and they eat them exactly like that.
 
Badger damage is far more obvious and not as neat and tidy as the pics above show. They basically trash an area, very often alongside the headland. Roe are browsers and will neatly trim of the odd stem here and there. Fallow, as if farmer Js pics show will eat the stem right down.
 
Out with a stalker a little while back and queried some maize damage that looked similar to op.

It was just a small amount of damage in a corner next to a headland, was told it wasn't a major problem, but that this had increased significantly previously when particularly hot / dry due to the high moisture content of the stem.
 
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