The Effect of Dominance Hierarchy on Deer Body Condition Scores in Standard Deer Paddock

Abstract

          Deer is a new economic animalwhich their productivities such as soft and hard antlers, deer meat and deer skinand tourism business are the main economic returns. However, the successful deer farming in limited area paddock and intensive management must learn and understand deer behaviors. Dominance hierarchy is the most important factor which causes the stressfulness and consequently, cost productivities.The dominant one will access to food, water, and area much more than the subordinate ones including repelling the later ones out of their resources. The results from this study showed that dominance hierarchy strongly affected Body Condition Scores.