1. Fencing

Deer are highly mobile and can travel long distances. They often come into contact with fences and don’t always jump them as you may think. They often try go through fences and in the process get stuck and thrash their way out. Sometimes they can get themselves so stuck they are unable to get out.

This is a destructive behaviour and leads to extra costs on the farmer or resident who has to replace this fencing. An unwanted expense.

2. Browsing

As mentioned in the previous section deer are heavy browsers. They are high energy animals and require a lot of feed to keep them healthy. This has detrimental effects on farming as deer will eat as much if not more then a sheep in a day. They will therefore cost the farmer and since deer are so mobile they may move between farms unnoticed and can be hard to manage. Thus costing both in monetary form but also in time due to management efforts to contain them.

3. Disease

Deer can carry diseases such as foot and mouth and will spread this to domestic stock. They also carry ticks. Once again as deer are mobile they can take diseases with them into new areas as they transverse farmland and forests.

This causes additional costs to farmers when they dose their stock to protect them only for them to be compromised by deer that may carry disease and therefore they have to re-dose their stock.