A baby deer, hand-reared by an animal rescuer after moving in with his family, is now best friends with his two dogs and even answers to her name.
Milly the fawn was mistakenly rescued from the wild when she was less than 24 hours old.
A year ago, a walker thought she had been abandoned in the long grass and took her to vets in Moretonhampstead, Devon, UK. Because the fawn had been in contact with a human, the vets believed her mother would not take her back, and called local animal rescuer Steve Hopper—a former police sergeant at Devon and Cornwall Police who has been helping the local wildlife for 40 years.
Mr. Hopper, 65, has hand-reared young Milly with the help of his two German shepherds, Bear and Fox, who have taken to her like family. She plays with the two dogs as though they were her siblings. Mr. Hopper says she will come when her name is called—especially when she knows there is a chocolate biscuit waiting for her.
“Milly is pretty unique,” Mr. Hopper said. “I love the day-to-day contact with her—firstly the fact she survived was an achievement.
“Now part of the joy I get is seeing the reaction of people who meet her, in particular with the dogs, she just throws herself into them, and that’s the bit that really amuses me. It’s something so unexpected, but she doesn’t care—she just plays, and they play with her.
“She is part of the family—the shepherds took to her from the moment she came to the door, and Milly actively plays with them. They are often all in the pen together. She will groom them, they will groom her—she'll headbutt them; they run around like kids. They just play.
“She’s still young, so how long she'll carry on that behavior I don’t know, but she interacts with them and me.”
Mr. Hopper explains that, normally, fawn follow their mothers around to learn and adopt their behaviors. But because Milly has had Mr. Hopper and his dogs as “parents,” she has followed their patterns of behavior.
The animal rescuer has three other bucks in his care, and even though he has introduced Milly to them many times, he says she shows “no interest” compared to him and the dogs.
Explaining the way Milly came into his care, Mr. Hopper says it is something that “never should have happened.”
He said: “She was a newborn when she was found: still sticky and mucky, with her umbilical cord still wet and soft. She was a newborn little fawn, and usually, deer don’t do very well when they have been hurt or taken away from their mothers. She should have been left alone as it’s all about balance.
“Fawns won’t move when they are very young, so she never should have been picked up—but the vets didn’t have much experience, so they rang me. I have been around animals all my life, but this was a crash course on the internet for me, as this was the first time I had a baby fawn in my care.”
Milly was given goat’s milk by Steve four times every day for the first 10 weeks she was in his care—until her taste buds began maturing with age and she developed a taste for anything green.
“We’ve got Pennywell Farm just up the road, and they were brilliant,” he said. “I rang them and said, ‘I have a silly request, but I’m going to need your goat’s milk for a fawn’, and they agreed.”
According to Steve, different deer need different milk: roe and fallow deer can have goat’s milk but not cow’s milk, while red deer can have cow’s milk but not goat’s milk.
He said: “Deer don’t wean off like we do. Even from quite a young age, Milly would nibble at grass—99 percent of her input was from milk, but she nibbled at vegetation when she was tiny.
“Then at 2 months old, you could see the difference: she would slowly start showing less interest in milk, and I noticed subtle changes in her behavior, as she was finding out what she did want to eat. The biggest issue is if there is something green in front of her she will stop and eat it!”
Milly now eats vegetation, goat’s milk, pellets, carrots, apples, and occasional chocolate biscuits.
Now that Milly is a bit older, she seeks less protection from her family, and her independence has grown as she depends less on Mr. Hopper.
“Before, she stuck to me like glue because she was so tiny, no bigger than a rabbit with large legs, so she had more motivation to stay close to me and the dogs,” he said. “But now, she stays in the field overnight, and I will send the dogs to find her and bring her back in for food.
“I can call her by name, I can whistle when I go out first thing, or if I haven’t seen her, she will come like a magnet—but once she knows you are about, she will just ignore you. When she knows you have treats, like a chocolate bourbon or dog treats, she will come, and occasionally, she comes for company, a nudge, and she’s very affectionate on a good day.”
Due to her unique start in life, Milly will not be released back into the wild but will remain with her new family in Devon.
Mr. Hopper says that dog walkers should keep dogs on leads around wild animals and urges people to use their common sense when coming into contact with baby animals that are alone or have been injured.
Mr. Hopper used to run his own falconry business and says he gets calls for animal rescues “like clockwork” every day—and they’re all funded from his own pocket.
“My general advice for any animal or bird, if you find it, is [to] leave it alone,” he said. “But also, if you have kids, think about it, are you going to leave your 2-year-old baby running around the play park on their own?
“It’s about balance and knowing what you’ve actually got in front of you.”
