Keep Deer Away from Your Orchard Trees

Deer are a gentle and graceful animal, but you are not likely to think of them in these terms when they invade your orchard and attack your trees. Deer enjoy eating trees, especially young trees.

\However, when they are hungry, they will eat whatever they can find (which means your orchard trees might make the perfect target for some hungry deer). They also move in numbers, making it crucial for you to protect your trees from destruction, which is a definite outcome should deer get at your orchard trees. The following tips will help you keep deer away from your trees.

Install Fencing

Fencing is one of the most effective methods of protecting your orchard trees from deer attacks. Use strong fencing such as electric fencing or net type fencing. Plastic net fencing is fairly cheap but will work. Electric fencing costs much more to acquire and maintain but is even more effective than plastic net fencing.

Caging the Trees

Put up a cage around the trees. Drive three or four stakes into the ground around the tree and place chicken wire around the stakes. Put some wire above the tree as well so that it is completely caged in. However, you will need to remove the wire later to allow the tree space to extend as it grows.

Deer Repellent

Spray a good deer repellent on your trees to put off the deer. The deer repellent has a bitter tasting substance, which the deer find completely unpalatable when they taste it. This will deter the deer from feeding on your orchard trees, having been repulsed by the bitter tasting repellent. Once applied, the repellent can last up to 4 months regardless of the weather as the latex bonding adheres firmly to the trees.

Tin Pans

These can be sued to scare away the deer. Hang the pans on your orchard trees, especially those trees at the periphery. When the deer approach and spot their reflection on the pans, they will run away fast.

Human Hair

Deer get scared off when they smell humans, so use human hair to keep them away from your trees. Ask your salon or barber for some hair you will place around each tree in a ring-like arrangement. You will have to replace the hair often—it'll decompose if it stays too long.

Wolf Urine

Wolves have always hunted down deer so deer will do everything to avoid wolves, even just by the scent of a wolf. Get wolf urine from your garden center, and apply it all around your orchard and also around some trees. At the first scent of wolf urine, the deer will be repelled and retreat.

Chicken Manure

Apply chicken manure all-around your orchard and also inside so that it is well distributed. The smell will put off deer when they arrive and deter them from getting at your trees.

You could also use a combination of two or three methods listed above for more effective results.