Deer and Rabbits have devastated my orchard. I had three year old trees that are eaten down to two feet. My other trees are girdled but all above the graft union as I have large wire cages around each tree. Branches are eaten and the bark is chewed right to the cambium, so most of my 37 trees look beige. I am beyond belief. They struck the middle of the trees not the base. Will all of my trees be toast?; They left my largest and oldest trees alone. They loved my most expensive
arborose red apple from arboreum, of course. They left me a twig. Some can be pruned way back It was a very hard winter here. Recooping Mrs.G
Wow, so sorry to hear that!! They do love browsing on fruit trees. I take great pleasure in fencing them out even at considerable cost and years of effort. One last yr jumped thru my wires so I doubled down on wires. This above cattle panels 5ft high. Now about 10 wires above that up to 8+ft. Take that!!
I’m really sorry about your damage. That’s an awful surprise just home from the hospital!!!
Sorry to hear about the damaged. You will be supprise that some of those trees will re-grow like mad.
Tony
OOOOF! that’s a gut shot.
Nothing to say except I have a pain in the pit of my stomach.
Any hope of Bridge grafting???
Mike
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Sorry to hear about all that damage, MrsG. You folks further north seem to have more issues with animal damage. I live in a very rural area, but have only had very minor animal damage. I suspect it’s from lack of snow cover. The worst damage I ever had was when one of my neighbor’s cows got out and went from tree to tree - it even ate some of the plastic tags that were on the trees!
I had a similar problem a few years ago and I feel your pain!
An electric fence using twine and t posts is an inexpensive and pretty effective option. This fence uses two parallel runs to confuse the deer and is sometimes called a “deer fence”. A dose of peanut butter or apple scent attached to the fence trains the deer quickly unless the deer pressure is great.
The first time the deer ate the limbs off my new apple trees they recovered, but the second time it killed the trees
Mrs. G,
So sorry to hear about this devastation. As of early/mid March, the snow level here was still 3 ft high. Some of my trees were damaged by a rabbit at that level. Anything lower was covered by snow.
Deer ate a number of branches on many trees except for blueberries. Not sure why not. I hope all your trees will recover.
Pardon my ignorance but do the deer and rabbit do all their damage when there is snow on the ground or do they do this damage all year long? I would imagine during summer time their would be much better tasting grasses to eat than fruit tree foliage and bark.
I need to start planning how I want to protect my new trees.
Deer don’t eat grass, at least not much. They are browsers not grazers. And they love to browse on fruit trees. They’ll eat mine any chance they get but mostly in summer.
There are deer in the woods behind my house but rarey have I seen them in my yard. I guess that could change if they find my fruit trees. 
I’m lucky the deer seem to leave my trees alone except for rubbing on them. They come in and bed down by my trees but they have never eaten any of them. I used to even keep a miniature horse in the area with my trees to keep the grass mowed down. It kept all the grass mowed down but left the trees alone. I do have to try to keep my limbs up high though to keep the raccoons and opossums out of the trees and eating the fruit.
Wow, and I thought I had a hard winter! Sorry to hear this. You worked hard on building that orchard. Hopefully some will recover.
Sorry to hear that. Hope most of the tree will recover. Keep the hope up and fingers crossed
I’m sorry to hear about your trees. It happens to me every year and is very disheartening. I have 2 yellow labs that do a pretty good job of keeping the deer out of the yard, but once or twice a year I find eaten tress. They seem to love my apples and cherries the best. Mine have always recovered, but I usually lose all the fruit. I started putting fences around each tree this year to try and minimize the damage
Sorry to hear! That is hard to take. They left me a lone this winter accept one seedling cherry tree which they used as an antler rub. The rabbits I fed by leaving lots of lower branches. We had very little snow so the branches , clover etc kept the rabbits happy. Bridge grafting is a good idea and worth a try.
That sucks, Mrs. G. Much of my young tree nursery is like a rabbit stockyard this year as well. It hasn’t been this bad for about 20 years here and the concentration of rabbit poop is much greater this time.
I knew they were around so kept raising the protection with the rising snow using plastic spirals. I still lost about 15 trees because my helper didn’t raise them all enough and I didn’t check his work.
It is such a shame that they showed up when you couldn’t do anything about it.
When it rains it pours. But that’s still a lot better than a 40" blizzard.
After a near complete loss at my last house, I did it right when I moved here. I light them up with a 8 wire hot high tensile fence 8 ft tall around the whole 2 acres. No problems at all now. I just have to keep the grass all mowed short so the rabbits and voles have nowhere to hide from the owls.
That is my dream for some day Jagchaser. I have 2.5 acres of hilly woods. there is a 4 ft chainlink fence buried in Alder, blackberries, elderberry and such. One of these days I’ll get the whole damn thing fenced and I’ll be able to grow espalier and dwarf trees and mow around raspberries with a riding mower. Until then it is cages and little fenced areas.
It is heart-breaking to find things eaten by the deer and rabbits. I have individual wire cages around most items, plus electric fence and also a general 6’ fence around the original area. The electric fence doesn’t work in the winter under snow drifts and icicles, however. Thankfully my orchard and garden are mostly out of public view. The first time my sister saw my garden, she said it looked like a squatter’s camp! I’m not sure how to have a both attractive and deer-proof garden at a low cost. There are always trade-offs. Well, I hope things spring back from what remains and grow vigorously. And that you also spring back quickly!
I feel your pain Mrs G. So sorry you had so much devastation to your orchard, and I know what a blow it was to you to venture out and witness it first hand. I truly hope you get some strong survivers to put out some new growth. We have been going through the same thing for the past 30 years. Deer, rabbits, goats and cold winters etc… No matter how well we think we have protected our trees we always end up with some part of our orchard being damaged. I told the hubby we should have a fully mature, large fruit bearing orchard by now if it weren’t for the damage over the years.
Ginny