Winter Diet Composition And Non-invasive Health Assessment Of Feral Sika Deer

The number of wild sika deer (Cervus nippon hortulorum) is quite few, the distributed region is quite narrow in the northeast of China. But there still lives some reintroduced and introduced sika deer in the forestry region of Heilongjiang province, these feral populations are the descendants of captive sika deer in Northeast of China which are released or escaped to this field before training. The winter of northern area is long and cold, lacking food resources, and it is the most difficult time for the animal to survive. In order to provides the reference for establishing the assessment of the feral sika deers'health condition and the monitor system, the non-invasive sampling method was used to investigate the ingestion, nutrition, stress and immune of the wild, feral and captive sika deer in the winter of2007-2011.In the present study, the trace character, the identification of the male and female individuals traces, the footprint character in sympatric ungulates in winter snow field were used for investigation. The microscopic analysis was used to detect the winter food composition of the wild and feral sika deer living in Sino-Russian Border, Longkou forestry centre(Tonghe county in Heilongjiang Province),and Guofu forestry centre(Baiquan county in Heilongjiang Province). The wild sika deer takes17branches,25categories,35species of plants including xylophyte15branches,23categories, herbaceous plant2branches,2categories as food in winter. The proportion of recognizable plants in food composition was87.7%, including81.4%branches and leaves from xylophyte,6.3%wormwood grasses. The feral sika deer living in forest takes18branches,25categories,34species of plants as food in winter, which consists of xylophyte12branches,19categories, herbaceous plant6branches,6categories.89.5%of the composition of food could be recognized, including75.3%of woody plant foliage and14.2%of the herb. The feral sika deer living in the ecotone of farming and forestry takes20branches,30categories,41species of plants as food in winter, which consists of xylophyte16branches,21categories, herbaceous plant4branches,9categories, including2species. In different years and months, the species and the proportion of plants grazed by the feral sika deer were different. The ingestion of water mainly depends on eating snow in winter.We observed the ingesting behavior of the feral sika deer by focal animal sampling, the time of bowing the head(including the parallel position with head) in ingesting process, accounting for87.7%of the total ingesting time, while the time of raising the head accounting for10.2%, looking up and lying in ingestion accounting for2.1%.The sika deer urine ice was used for extracting and amplifying the DNA, and2groups of primer were applied to identify the gender, as a result,16in17urine ice samples were identified successfully. Compared with the fecal samples, the DNA in urine samples was easier to be extracted and amplified. The nuclear DNA in urine samples of sika deer can be kept at least14months at-20℃. The DNA resources in urine ice may also apply to other genetics researches based on the line plastochondria DNA.The steroid hormone and immune globulin in sika deer feces and urine were detected by ELISA method. The sex hormone of sika deer population varies in different district and species. At the beginning of December, in the same circumstance, the testosterone concentration of both the captive and the feral male sika deer were obviously higher than the female ones. The concentrate diversity of estradiol and progesterone in male and female sika deer was not remarkable. The fecal progesterone concentration in the mature sika deer is obviously higher than the infancy. At the beginning of February, the testosterone concentration in the urine from captive male sika deer was variously higher than the females, while the urine estradiol concentration in the grown-up female deer was obviously higher than the male ones. After comparing with sika deers' cortisol hormone, IgG and IgA concentration change in the different gender, different district, different month, the captive and feral, we found the disperse level of concentration of uric cortisol hormone, IgG and the IgA was higher than in the feces, reflecting the animal instantaneous stress and the immunity physiology level. The fecal and uric concentration of cortisol is effected by factors such as nutrition and snowfall, etc. The fecal concentration of cortisol has no relevance with the concentration of IgG and IgA, the uric concentration of cortisol was obviosly relative to the concentration of IgG and IgA. The feral sika deer feces and urine hormone cortisol, IgG and IgA concentrations'difference was not significantly in male nor female animals.The crude protein content in dry matter of captive sika deer concentrated feed is8.9%～14.8%, the crude protein content of coarse fodder is4.3%～7.2%, which could meet the lowest maintenance needs to survive in winter. After analysing the nutrition constituent of the partial plants eating by feral sika deer, the crude protein content was4.7%～13.6%, the feral sika deer can self-adjust its food composition based on the practical condition. About26.4%～42.1%of the dry matter content in the feces of sika deer was different depend on the different feed and digestion ability. The fecal nitrogen content account the dry matter for1.38%～2.17%, which could not be used as the referent of food nutrition value independently. In the urine of sika deer, the ratio of urea nitrogen and the creatinine reflects the different animals' nutrition condition in different areas individually, the results revealed that the nutrition condition of the infant deer and the male mature ones were worse than the female mature ones in winter. But the negative balance and the body weight reduction in winter nutrition metabolism was a kind of normal physiological phenomenon to adapt the environment, when the ratio of urea nitrogen and the creatinine were used to determine the animal nutrition condition into undernourishment, we should be more careful, because the critical value of the normal nutrition condition of sika deer and the early-phase lacking the value of urea nitrogen and the creatinine may be6-10.The purine derivative content in the urine of sika deer was detected by high performance liquid chromatography, the result showed that the ratio of allantoin compared with creatinine and purine derivatives compared with the creatinine in the urine of fawn is obviously higher than the mature sika deer, the proportion of Allantoin accounting for the total purine derivatives in urine was74%-89%, uric acid was2%-10%, the xanthine and hypoxanthic was8%～16%, the ratio of allantoin compared with creatinine and purine derivatives compared with the creatinine presents significant correlation.After inspecting the parasite from110captive and feral sika deer fecal samples randomly, there was only one captive sample checked out the ball insects egg, and the quantity was quiet small, therefore we considered that sika deer has the strong anti-parasite ability.Through the synthetical assessment, we figured that the nutrition condition of the feral sika deer living in Baiquan was pretty well, its stress and the immunity level were both in the normal range, most individuals in the feral population were healthy. The latitude of Baiquan area is high, the winter is cold, which is in the mosaic of farmland and forest, the living environment is disgusting, and the artificial activity is quite rampant, fortunately, a strong adaptiveness were showed by the sika deer in our study.Most of the wild deer are protectional aimal in China, non-invasive method such as the fecal and uric physiology, the biochemistry target and unifies the parasite inspection etc. were useful and safety to assess its state of health in cold winter.