On page three of the July, 2011 issue there is a picture of someone holding a young deer. The county dive team rescued a two-day-old fawn. There are basically two types of ungulate species — followers and hiders.

Followers, like wildebeest, calve and in an hour the calf follows the herd. Giraffe are hiders and hide their calves for up to a week post-partum, as do elk, waterbuck and deer.

In Africa, we always had people bring in newly born ungulates that they thought were abandoned, but the cow will come back to collect the calf. So the people were orphaning the calves.

Vaughan A. Langman, Ph.D.
Research Biophysicist