Behavioural responses of red deer to fences of five different designs

Capercaillie, a large species of grouse, are sometimes killed when they fly into high-tensile deer fences. A fence design which is lower or has a less rigid top section than conventional designs would reduce bird deaths, but such fences would still have to be deer-proof. The short-term behavioural r esponses of farmed red deer (Cervus elaphus) to fences of five designs, inc luding four that were designed to be less damaging to capercaillie. were me asured. Five deer were located on one side of a fence with a larger group ( 20 animals), from which they had been recently separated, on the other. The efficacy of fences in preventing deer from the small group from rejoining the larger group was also recorded. In addition to a conventional deer fenc e (C) the four new designs were, an inverted "L" shape (L), a fence with of fset electric wire (E), a double fence (D) and a fence with four webbing ta pes above (W). Four replicate groups of deer were each tested for 3 days wi th each fence design. Deer paced the test fence line relatively frequently (a proportion of 0.09 scan observations overall) but significantly less whe n deer were separated by fences E or C compared to L, W or D (overall diffe rence between fence types, P < 0.001). Deer separated by fence E spent sign ificantly more time pacing perimeter fences than deer separated by fences o f other types (overall difference between fence types, P < 0.01) but deer s eparated by fence C maintained a low level of fence pacing overall. Analysi s of behaviour patterns across the first day and the 3 days of exposure sug gested that the novelty of the test fences, rather than the designs per se, influenced the behaviour of the deer. Over the course of the study, no dee r crossed either C or L. Three deer crossed E and two deer crossed both W a nd D. On this basis, field testing, particularly of fence L, would be a use ful next step. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.