Stories
Edge farm lessons on shade and troughs.
The Karoo is famous for its big sky, bright sun and those tough berg winds that come howling off the koppies. At Karoo Edge Farm, we place water and shade for our fallow deer camp by camp. A hot, windy week here can empty a trough and strip a shade line in days.
Fallow deer do well in the Karoo if we respect their limits. Our Fallow Grove Herd graze in large camps, each with its own microclimate. Some camps get hammered by the west wind, while others sit in the wind shadow of a low ridge. We check shade trees and windbreaks before every hot spell. Too often, I’ve seen a promising clump of karee saplings snapped by a single gust. When the weather service talks of El Niño and less rain, we pay even more attention to the gaps in shade, especially for young fawns.
Shade comes from cloth and walls as well as trees. We use shade cloth stretched from kraal poles, and in older camps, long corrugated roof panels fixed between sturdy gum posts. The deer quickly learn which corners stay cool through the worst of the midday sun. But we have also seen deer crowd a single patch of shade, sometimes bullying the smaller ones out. We had to double the shaded area in one camp last December after a week of berg winds left the ground baked and bare.
In this veld, every camp is planned around its water troughs. We run gravity lines to most camps and keep a backup tank filled on the highest slope for emergencies. Troughs must be set low enough for fawns but high enough that mud doesn’t build up too fast. I remember one sticky afternoon when I opened a tap too wide and flooded the low camp, making a muddy mess the deer avoided for days.
Every trough gets checked twice a day in summer. Birds and jackal can foul the water and pipes clog up with grit after a sudden rain. We keep a spare ball valve, a roll of pipe and a bakkie full of elbow grease handy during the dry months.
We have not always got it right. One winter, a strong north wind snapped a new shade frame before we’d anchored it deep enough. The frame crashed right onto a salt lick, spooking the does and keeping them away from both shade and minerals for two days. We learnt to test every post by hand, and now we anchor all new frames with rock baskets as well as deep-set gum poles.
Algae in the water troughs caught us out as well. In hot weather with little flow, green slime can build up fast. Now we scrub every trough weekly and add a handful of clean stones to slow the growth. If I forget, it's the deer that remind me, standing back and pulling faces at the water. They know what they want.
One late afternoon just before calving, I watched a group of does shuffle quietly to the trough under the old pepper tree. The wind was still, but the air was thick and hot. A little fawn, still unsteady, slipped between two larger does and nudged the ball valve with its nose, making the water trickle. That small click and the soft splash in the trough always tells me our system is working. On a hot afternoon in these hills, a fawn may drink four or five times.
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Shade cloth, walls and troughs shelter the Fallow Grove Herd from the berg winds.
