I don’t protect my raspberry and blackberry canes and the deer have been munching away on them. When I was inspecting the damage I noticed that they didn’t touch anything with thorns. Has anyone else seen this? If the thorns keep them away I may order thorn varieties to replace my thornless varieties. Hoping this is an effective solution to combat the 4-legged terrorists!
They browse on my thorny blackberries but certainly are more cautious than with other things.
How much damage have you seen on your thorn varieties?
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Maybe up to 5% but never more than that.
They love buckthorn, which they eat very cautiously.
They’ve browsed on our new thornless canes, but not too bad. Mostly take the leaves, but have munched on some of the cane tips. The plants have recovered pretty well, though.
The canes from the raspberries we planted this year aren’t as big as the blacks, but the deer have left those alone. I’ve noticed some of the canes have small spines on them.
We’ve had more issues with J beetles getting after the leaves than deer.
Deer love our raspberries, Prelude and a golden variety (Anne I think). They certainly have prickers but not what I would call long thorns. However they will also happily eat the apricot I am growing which has plentiful thorns on it. And they loved rose bushes with thorns when we had them.
I suspect much has to do with what other food sources are available, and perhaps the personal likes and dislikes of the individual deer.
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I have yet to see or find evidence of deer here eating any domestic or wild raspberries or blackberries.