You guys are pretty much all right on the money. I just think of deer like cows since they work the same.
CJBS2003 --> The situations you have described are correct
RAH --> It isn't a hypothesis; it happens i promise, but you are correct that it isn't going to happen very often (if at all) in nature; even if a landowner is supplementing their diet with corn.
FullCircleTx --> 100% correct
Tell me more about how deer digest protein? So it's a waste to feed them high protein pellets of even roasted soybeans?
Yes, its a waste to feed high protein pellets to ruminants, even if its roasted soybean; however, it would help if you were feeding those food items to monogastrics (like pigs, humans, dogs) and here is why.
Monogastrics (pigs, humans, dogs for example) have limited machinery to break down plant matter (or deal with trypsin inhibitors).
It has to do with "bioavailability" of protein with monogastrics, and I like to think of it in two ways.
1) Trypsin inhibitors are present; which will effect how chymotrypsin, carboxypeptidase and other important protein degredation enzymes work. Trypsin inhibitors will suppress activation of these enzymes, consequently making them not work very well.
So if you heat treat soybeans, which have trypsin inhibitors, then the heat will denature the trypsin inhibitors and render them ineffective, which leads to better digestion and absorption from monogastrics (pigs, humans, dogs etc).
But with ruminants (deer and cows) never think that you are directly feeding the animal. You are indirectly feeding the animal no matter what food you give it.
This is because you are directly feeding the microbes which call first dibs on everything the ruminant eats.
So it works kind of like this...
You give the deer soybean (heated or non-heat treated, doesn't matter they treat it the same as a protein source) ---> Microbes ferment it and use the amino acids that you paid for their own personal use -----> microbes die eventually and enter the ruminants TRUE stomach ---> The dead microbes supply almost all of the Essential Amino Acids required by the ruminant and are the primary protein source.
At the same time you can estimate that 16% of the soybean protein that you purchased is going to sneak by the microbes and make it to the ruminants TRUE stomach unmolested.
So, you can see that you paid top dollar for a high quality protein source and 84% of that protein was wasted because the microbial population did whatever they wanted with it.
Even if there wasn't sufficient amounts of protein entering the diet for the microbes to use for themselves, the ruminants have developed a cool little trick. Instead of urinating to get rid of all their Urea like most other animals, they recycle it into the parts of their stomach where the microbial population lives, and they COMBINE that urea with carbon skeletons from carbohydrates (CORN) to create amino acids. So they can essentially create protein from non-protein sources... Pretty cool huh?
Just to give you an idea of how good they are at this...
1 pound of urea + 6 pounds of corn grain = the same amount of crude microbial protein as 7 pounds of soybean meal.
So, just by feeding them corn, you are indirectly giving them a protein source by supplying carbon skeletons for them to attach the recycled urea to --> amino acids
Scenario #2) You feed protein to a monogastric (pig, human, dog) that is plant based in origin. Some of that protein is not able to be used, or has low "bioavailability" because it is surrounded by cellulose.
So you have protein that has a wall of cellulose around it; so the crude protein on the label could be high, but the animal can't use it because it can't break the cellulose bonds to get to it.
So you treat it / process it --> now monogastrics can use the protein.
You don't have to do this for ruminants because again, the microbes will just ferment it and break down the cellulose, so the protein is available for the microbes to use anyways. Microbes die, and the ruminant eats the microbes. Same stuff happens.
Its kind of funny to think about it, but ruminants (deer and cows) are actually pretty carnivorous in that they eat microbes to get their protein requirements.
Here is the super short story now that you probably read all of that crap...
Feed corn and they will make their own protein from it so you will kill 2 birds with 1 stone.
1) They will make protein from corn
2) they will use the corn as a potential energy source for growth
If you still want to supplement protein just incase, then decrease the soybean meal to a very low percent like 10%
These recommendations would be totally different / precise if this were a feedlot setting with pens, but it isn't.
Ruminants are really good at making low quality foods into really useful stuff, so don't stress out too much trying to optimize a diet plan for the deer. I would just opt for what is cost effective for you, because in the end the results won't differ too much. Genetics are of more importance.
Last edited by Gflo; 06/04/12 01:03 PM.
