Abandoned rare deer hand-reared in animal keeper’s caravan

A RARE deer which was rejected by his mother at birth is being hand-reared in a caravan, it emerged yesterday.

The Pere David's deer, named Colin, spends the night near to Carolyn Morrison, an animal keeper at the Blair Drummond Safari Park in Stirlingshire, England.

Workers at the park ensured the young animal survived the first few hours of his life by feeding him through a tube placed in his throat.

The deer named after local vet Colin Scott who helped deliver him more than five weeks ago has now taken to being bottle-fed by Ms Morrison.

She said: "His mother didn't want anything to do with him, so we had to rear him.

"It was very much a last resort, because you really don't want to rear them away from their parents, but in this case we had no choice.

"There was no other way of bringing him on, and really it was either that, or he would almost certainly have died."

Ms Morrison added: "It was a struggle at the start. He didn't take well to the bottle and had to be stomach-tubed for the vital first milk.

"By the next day he had started to suckle. He had to be fed every three hours initially and I was having to get up quite often during the night, so it was just as easy to bring him home, where he stays in a little pen."

Ms Morrison said the deer's feeds were getting larger and he was gradually growing stronger.

"He's still a bit wary of things, but he can also be quite lively, even cheeky," she added.

"When he goes outside to run about, he chases kids up and down the grass."

Colin's future remains uncertain as he may have to move on since it is unlikely he will be able to stay with the existing group of five adult deer.

The Pere David's Deer is a critically endangered species, virtually extinct in the wild.

Native to China, the deer takes its name from the French missionary and naturalist, Father Armand David, who in 1865 managed to observe the animals in the Emperor of China's high-walled Imperial Hunting park, near Beijing.

Several specimens were sent to Europe where they flourished in captivity, while the species largely perished in China in the early 1900s before being successfully re-introduced towards the end of the century.