Yellow Rattle and deer

[podimore@gmail.com]

I have spent 2 years trying to establish yellow rattle on a sloping meadow and this year have had moderate success. To my dismay, after huge effort, I am discovering that deer are eating the flower spikes on a daily basis. Is there anything I can do to prevent this ( the area is difficult to fence in and the patches of plants quite widespread). Thanks!

[Steve Pollard]

It's unfortunate, but if you have deer they are always going to eat a meadow's tastiest delicacies. Save from fencing (difficult), shooing them away (at unsociable hours) or shooting them (extreme measures), there's not much you can do other than trust that if you're managing your meadow well that enough of your plants will survive each year for your meadow to establish and mature. If your patches of rattle are already widespread, as you say, they will continue to colonise your meadow - the deer won't eat it all, and each plant produces masses of good seed.

[podimore@gmail.com]

Thanks for your reply. The rattle is only just getting going so fingers crossed enough survives to allow it to continue to spread

[Amy]

Farmers on Exmoor tie their plastic feed bags in the gaps in a hedge where the red deer jump through into the field. The bags flap in the wind. You could use anything similar. Change the position regularly, so the deer don't get used to them and ignore the bags. We know someone who has used a deer and bird repellent reflective tape which makes a noise in the wind, apparently it was very successful.

We have red deer crossing twice a day by jumping in, and roe squeeze through a wire fence occasionally. They don't appear to eat the little amount of rattle which I have. The red deer come to eat the short grass, paddle in the ponds, and to 'nest', or sleep, in the long grass at night. I've put brash (a pile of cut branches) in some of the gaps where the deer jump in - in my case this is to stop them poaching the grass in those positions and leaving bare earth to be colonised by dock seeds. They won't jump onto a mesh of spiky points. One does have to watch that the brash doesn't fertilise the ground beneath it so much that brambles and nettles start growing there - just move it around occasionally.

If you only have a few patches of rattle, I suppose you could suspend a stretch of wire netting between temporary metal mesh stakes and above each patch of the rattle, for the few weeks the rattle is growing and seeding. A bit like stretching wire mesh to support dahlias, but placing it above the plant.

PS if you do this - please put some bags or warning tape or similar to flap in the wind and to alert the deer to this wire, or they may blunder into it at night.

Battery operated electric fencing will keep the deer off to some extent - you might borrow some from a pony owner - you will need to make sure the grass is kept low so it does not short out the fence. Check the grass and fence every day. Again, you need to literally flag up the electric fence along its entire length - to warn the deer, as otherwise they may get tangled up in it at night, and inadvertantly pull it all out whilst struggling to break free. It's not a great solution:- every time I've tried to use electric fencing for ponies where deer are known to graze the same field, eventually the deer get tangled up and break the wire, and I don't like to think of them shocked as they struggle free.

[podimore@gmail.com]

Thanks both for such detailed answers