BRC Fallow Deer

 “be delivered.” But what does it take to build it? It takes a lot! The amount of preparation that went into starting our deer ranch was staggering. It was also laid solely on my husband’s shoulders since I am the primary caregiver of our two small children. Brendan worked diligently to research this endeavor, prepare the site as well as build their pen. This was no small feat accomplished on a short timeline.

The deer pen spans across 5 acres and contains a catch pen within it. We have plans to add additional fencing to break the large pen up into 4 pens for future sorting. These inner pens will all have a gate opening into the catch pen and will radiate out from there.  This design will help reduce having 90 degree corners that make it difficult to round up the deer into the catch pen. I have included a drawing of our future pen design below.  

We have gone to great lengths to provide a great habitat for our fallow deer. There is a line of large cedar trees within the pen that provides shade in the summer, cover for security and warmth in the winter.  We have also planted 3 Saw-tooth white oak trees and 3 Shumard Red Oak trees from Dudley at Mossy Oak Nativ Nurseries. These trees will grow to produce more shade for the deer in the future. We even left some large cut cedar trees in the center of the pen for cover.  These were left over from clearing the area where we built the fence. The deer have found these and turned them into shade shelters already.

Brendan sourced the best materials for our project from a couple local vendors. They even delivered to our homestead! We purchased our corner fence pipes from Hizey Service and Supply in Augusta, KS. Who just happen to be our neighbors to the northwest.  Our 8 foot tall fencing materials came from Triple S Ranch Supply in El Dorado, KS. Have you ever seen a 10 foot tall t-post? It’s impressive! Maybe just from a fencing stand point. Since we live in a fairly rocky area we also hired Hebb Company LLC to dig holes for our corner fence posts. This saved us a bunch of time as well as wear and tear on our equipment. We love that we were able to buy local and support our local community.

It never fails that during a project Brendan has to “get creative” in his methods.  He struggled to find a fencing stretcher that could be shipped to us in a timely manner without breaking the bank, so he made his own! A quarter of the way through the project, he found one to order and it was shipped out directly.  After receiving the second fence stretcher through Kencove, Brendan made awesome headway on the fence. He even manage to finish on time!   

How fitting that we celebrated our 6^th anniversary by working on the deer fence together. We have always prioritized building our homestead from day one of our marriage. Instead of going on a honeymoon, Brendan took me to the Holton Livestock Exchange and we purchased a small herd of cattle. Who knows what our 10… 15… 25^th wedding anniversaries will bring.

A huge shout out to all our family and friends that have assisted with the fence build, babysitting, meal gathering and all around support as we started this new adventure. We are so thankful to have all the support that we do!