HELPING HANDS

Every year in Germany, thousands of fawns perish during hay-making season. Now volunteers are using technology to rescue them

- JOE PONTIN

IT'S DAWN IN A MEADOW IN southern Bavaria. A faint breeze ruffles the grass and whispers through the leaves of the woodland nearby. It seems deserted. Yet look closely – there, in the shadow between blades of grass, two glossy brown eyes glitter. Curled unseen in its green den lies a tiny roe deer, with black nose, outsized ears and fur dappled with spots.

Not far away, farmer Klaus Waldschütz is busy attaching his mower to his tractor. It's hay season, and the weather is fine and dry - perfect for haymaking. Klaus has 6ha of grassland and meadow to cut, dry out, rake and bale. It will be a long few days, but the hay crop is vital nourishment for the farm's dairy herd through the winter months.

With a dry weather window this morning, farmers all over Bavaria are preparing their hay mowers. These are impressive pieces of kit containing whirling knives that swiftly reduce the knee-high grass down to a few centimetres.

Evolution has not prepared the fawns for such behemoths. The loss of life is staggering: in Germany alone, between 50,000 and 100,000 deer are thought to perish beneath the blades of hay mowers each year, according to Deutsche Wildtier Stiftung (German Wildlife Foundation). Such collisions trouble farmers. Klaus remembers when his father accidentally killed a youngster during mowing. “It was after a long period of rain. The grass was pressed down, so he didn’t notice the deer. He felt bad because a living creature was harmed. A farmer works with nature and its animals.”

Why don’t fawns simply run from the mowers? The answer is rooted in the ingenious strategy roe deer have evolved to protect their newborns from predators, a strategy that has served the species well - until relatively recently.