Usually when deer are not eating standing corn, there is a reason. Most likely, it has mold on it. The next likely reason is because someone close by is dumping shelled corn. Deer are lazy and will take the shelled corn first. Other reason is you lack the thermal cover close by.

Here is my understanding of the deer's winter digestion cycle told to me from a MI biologist that I did some wildlife clear cuts for many years ago. Their system turns from summer (green plants) to winter (Browse) and that takes a while to change over so feeding hay, corn during the tough winters do little as they don't get the benefits if they are in the browse stage of winter.

He said even after a harsh winter and a warn spring arrives their system needs to change over so they are still at risk of malnutrition with green grass available because again they get next to nothing out of it until the chemicals to digest it switch back.

In the winter dropping a few aspens will do more for the deer/snowshoes then corn and hay, clearing some hardwood areas out of everything bigger then 3 inches while leaving the fruit/nut trees is the way the DNR did it back then. The regrowth would be thick for years until it thins itself out over the coming years.

I've seen both deer and elk dead from malnutrition with bellies full of corn. We had a few elk die a couple years ago that all they were eating was corn put out. It's a pretty horrible death.

Corn is like candy to them. Like stated above if they aren't in the standing corn there's something wrong with the corn, not the deer.

If you live in a farming area with a lot of cornfields they should be able to tolerate it in moderation pretty good.

This one is being fed down the road from me a ways. This is a friend of a friend doing the feeding. Looks like shelled corn.

Somebody is going to pop that one next year.

He's already been trained to come to feed.

There can be standing corn but if deer don't have good thermal cover very close by, they may not feed there.

That's what the same biologist said they track the thermal index I believed he called it and that was a predicting factor on figuring stress/loss.

Dunno about corn, but around here deer eat piles of grain, literally, and thrive. They know, unlike domestic animals, not to overindulge. If they didn’t, we would not have elk and deer as thick as they are here.

I've seen deer do awfully well on 14% horse feed mix along with alfalfa.

Osky

I think it's that the shelled corn is much harder for them to digest coming off their summer/fall staples. I know the biologists here are dead set against it.