I have ongoing animal damage on my cherry trees. It started last year. Branches were broken off and leaves all gone. I thought it was deer. I fenced the yard 7 feet tall, black mesh. There is no evidence of damage to the fence. No evidence of a deer going under. The fence has been in place since last fall. Now in the last 4 weeks I have had two attacks. Attack number one lettuce eaten, and the cherry tree stipped of almost all the leaves. It had only new growth, as last years attack had almost killed the tree. (another tree did die) The tree survived this last attack, and was putting out new growth again. Now something has again eaten almost all the growth. The upper branches of the tress are about 7-8 feet tall, lower branches around 4 feet. It may still be deer, clearly they could jump my fence. However, are there other animals which could do this damage. There was all sort of other tasty deer food, flowers, trees, etc. not more then 15 feet away that was untouched. I do have porcupine, but did not see any bark damage. Thanks, Tobi
Perhaps some others will weigh in, but this sounds a lot like deer and what has happened to me. How tall are your trees? If the leaves are stripped above 6' then it's not deer. My nursery guy made a housecall and told me that it's early enough in the season for them to leaf out again if you can figure out what the damage is and stop it. He also told me that the trees should be fine next year no matter what. I would look carefully at your fence line all the way around. We found that the grade was higher on the outside of the fence making it easier for them to jump over in some places. We also found a big tree stump on the other side making it easy for them to climb on and jump over. We also found a few places where they were able to separate the old fence from the mesh above. We fixed all those things including moving the fence on the other side of the stump (which is still on our property line), and adding barbed wire to 8', and making sure they can't separate the fence anywhere by wiring everything together. So far, no deer for 3 days.
I measured and the top branches of the tree (which were also eaten) are 8 feet tall. I think the white tail deer can get higher then 6 feet if they realy want the food. Thanks for the points about the fence. I will need to check. I assumed the deer would not use a log/rock/stump to help in Jumping. If it is a deer, it also manages to get back out. I was wondering if a porcupine could be doing the damage to the leaves and small bracnhes. No evidence of any trunk bark damage. Thanks, Tobo
Welcome to the forum tobibenne. It really sounds like deer to me, but my deer have not eaten anything over 6', and usually not higher than 5'. So on my baby fruit trees, they strip them up to the top and they all look like lollipops with a few leaves left on top. And I don't know what kind of deer I'm dealing with or if there's a size difference between different types. I guess porcupines can climb trees, but I'd be amazed if they can strip a tree in one night. My deer were frequently getting in but couldn't seem to remember how to get out, so in the morning we would open the gate for them to leave (with a little encouragement :( ). I'm hoping some others will have an opinion on this because I'm just not sure.
