Deer Repellent - Unfenced Stamp Orchard

Hello Everyone,
As the growing season approaches so does the imminent threat of deer. I was wondering if anyone has had any luck keeping the brown devils from eating their new growth with repellents? If so which did you use? Last year they ate a lot of lead nodes off of my whips and I am hoping that I can encourage them to find other fodder without investing in a fence. After the spring they seem to browse elsewhere.

Thank you in advance for the advice.

PS: This is in a residential area so turning them to jerky or using any sort of audible deterrent are not workable.

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Using repellents is tough. You have to re-apply them religiously.

The top repellent is Pigs Blood, also known as Plantskydd. Amazing stuff. Hard to spray.

The next best repellent is rotten eggs. AKA Putrascene. Easy to make, but smelly! Crack a bunch of eggs anh put the innards in a 5 gallon bucket. The first batch can take a while to rot, but subsequent batches will rot in just a few days. Add 1/2 as much in water. Once it’s rotted - pour it into a sprayer, but be sure to use a sieve otherwise you might clog your sprayer. And you really really don’t want to unclog a sprayer filled with rotten eggs.

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There have been lots of threads here about deer and fences , rabbits and fences. I don’t have a huge amount of deer pressure but I did have a Fuji just picked clean of leaves summer before last and had some damage to an ohxf 87 pear rootstock. Now I live in the country so my situation is a little different than yours but this is what I did. My daughter and her husband got a rescue dog from a local shelter. The poor thing had not been treated very well but she was young and forgiving. They had her for a year and had to move to a house where they just couldn’t keep her any more. We brought her out to our house and I made a place for her in the back yard. She is a very high energy dog , half boxer and half pit bull if I were guessing. Every night I turn her loose just after dark and then put her back up at daylight. She also spends the weekends with me while I mow and do other yard chores. I have had no rabbit damage or deer damage since last spring. It costs me a little bit of dog food and time but she gets a place to live and do all of the running she wants. I don’t have a yard fence but it is a lot easier to fence a dog in that to fence a deer out.

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I use a couple eggs per gallon of water with a bar of ivory soap dissolved in warm water after shredding. Works for about 3 weeks. Plantskyd is a commercial alternative I sometimes use, either alone or mixed with my own concoction but at much less than label rates when not using it alone. It may work longer. I have a nursery with no fence and a great deal of dear pressure, but pressure varies from region to region, even beyond population, and what works one place may not work at another. Repellents work for me, and it’s amazing how quickly deer pressure returns as soon as the repellents fade and disappears immediately after app.

Only thing guaranteed to work is an 8’ fence, a free roaming dog, or lead pesticide. For me, deer ignore all repellents (haven’t tried plantskyyd).

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Plantskyd is not so difficult to spray if you have the means to mix it well. I use 2.5 gallon used hort oil jugs that allows me to shake it up vigorously so it completely dissolves. It occasionally clogs the sprayer but it’s no big deal- usually the filter catches it all. But you have to be sure to clean the filter when you are done. Once I tried to get away with just clean rinsing the sprayer and running clean water through without taking out the filter and carefully cleaning it before putting the sprayer away for winter. Mice ate through the plastic in the wand to get to the blood on the filter.

Sulfur with Surround seems to work ok for me. It keeps my neighborhood deer at bay during scab and curculio season. I usually get my attacks after rains that wash the two off.

Last year I went to squirting putrescene on strips of old shirt tied to my primary deer fence. That also kept them somewhat at bay. These strips hold their stink longer than leaves as a light rain and dew seem to reactivate the purification process. This also gets me away from spraying that stuff on my fruit.

I live in town limits. I’ve tries sprays, nothing seems to work. I use 2x4 welded wire around my new trees and have 2 yellow labs. both the wire and the dogs together work great 95% of the time. It’s that last 5 % where the %$#$ing deer can do so much damage to a young tree/orchard!!!..I HATE DEER!!!

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Zero Dark Hundred, Crossbow in hand, face painted camo black, night vision goggles. Remember stealth movement is a must! Deep breath, good sight alignment, pull trigger.

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Sadly these are more domesticated (residential) deer so their fear of dogs and people has become laxed. They will run from you if you get close but anything more than 50 ft away and they are happy to ignore you.
I have two dogs, one border collie and one collie mix, so i take them out there to go to the bathroom every so often in hopes that the scent might deter them a bit.
I’m glad your 4 legged partner works for you though. That would be very convenient.

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How potent is the sulfur smell to humans? My orchard is not all that far from my neighbor’s pool so I wouldn’t want something that would be a nuisance to them.

I’ve done the math and individual cages for the trees would be about $300 or a cheap perimeter fence would cost me a bit more than that. Sadly there are other things that the money is better spent on this year. I’ve contemplated shooting them with a bb gun just to prod them but who knows how effective that would actually be and how much it would hurt the deer. Paintball would likely be a better option.

I’ve been trying to rid deer from my orchard for years now. Soap on a rope, hair from my wife’s salon, pie pans banging in the wind, deer repellant, cages, solar motion lights, and probably a few other things. Every morning when I look at my surveillance camera clips I see deer heading to the orchard.

The time of year I really worry is when they are rubbing their antlers more than nibbling. My next thought is to take one of the solar lights that has the motion sensor and put a small LOUD beeper or siren or something that goes off when the motion is activated… I live in the country so neighbors not an issue. Just haven’t decide what sound would spook them and if they would get used to it and my idea would become a waste.

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Not a sulfur smell. Putrescine is a major component of the smell of rotting flesh. I wouldn’t spray it while the neighbors were using the pool, but once it dries they won’t notice it.

Maybe a dog bark then switch it out with human voice

My [quote=“busch83, post:11, topic:9767, full:true”]
How potent is the sulfur smell to humans? My orchard is not all that far from my neighbor’s pool so I wouldn’t want something that would be a nuisance to them.
[/quote]

Sulfur (Cumulus WP, Bonide Sulfur Dust which is a WP) is only noticeable when you are right next to the trees. It has a sulfur dioxide smell (campden tablets) and not hydrogen sulfide smell.

I must be mistaken on the out product I use, it isn’t putrescine. It has putrescent egg solids, rosemary oil, and mint oil (Deer Stopper). I think the latter two just make it easier on the human nose. It is more of a rotten egg, hydrogen sulfide smell. Once it is dried on my shirt strips it, again, only smells up close. I always apply it with nitrile gloves on, because it will make your hands smell awful. I fill up a 3 oz syringe with the stuff and squirt it on the rags.

I just purchased “Deer Stopper” since that seemed to get pretty good reviews. It was an amazon purchase so I couldn’t see the ingredients. I am glad that it has some of the same substances that were suggested by the community here. Although I apparently could have saved myself some money and used rotted eggs. Either way if it saves my trees from the deer I am happy.

I have also been told that all manner of creatures do not care for mint so I thought about planting that at the base of the trees but don’t want the whips competing for nutrients.

You might try one (or more) of those motion sensor sprinklers. They do work at least at first, The deer get spooked when it comes on and shoots water at them. I did not use them all that long so I can’t say if they would get used to them after a while.

Believe me, if your dogs acted with the intent to kill the deer would adjust accordingly. The same thing goes with squirrels. On properties where dogs actually kill squirrels the squirrels behave entirely differently than when all dogs do is some barking and halfhearted chasing when they are in the mood for a bit of excitement. Food is a life and death issue, hunger highly motivating- deterrence must be aggressive. Cornell recommends specific breeds for the task of defending commercial orchards, but I’m sure a wider range of breeds could be trained for the task (a dog trainer told me so, and why should he lie?) A problem is that dogs have to patrol at night to be effective against deer. Barking is part of the deal.

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Putrescent egg solids = putrescine