For Pennsylvania's white-tailed deer herd, the path to winter starvation may be sprinkled with corn kernels.

Deer love corn; in fact, area farmers often bemoan the damage deer wreak on their corn crops. But farmers harvested the corn by mid-November, which means that deer haven't nibbled that staple in recent months.When well-meaning humans dump out a pile of corn, hoping to help the deer eke out an existence during the winter months, it can kill them. That's what killed a trophy bull elk earlier in December. And in Pennsylvania, it's against the law to feed elk.The sudden bonanza of a corn meal can cause a condition called rumen acidosis. The condition is caused by the sudden introduction of carbohydrates, usually grain and corn, to an animal's diet. In an attempt to digest the new food, the animal's body produces too much lactic acid, which can kill them.According to a press release issued by the Pennsylvania Game Commission regarding the dead elk, the diets of wild deer and elk vary by their home ranges, and often change throughout the year. Their bodies adjust to accommodate those changes, but if their diets change suddenly rather than gradually, their bodies are unable to digest the newly introduced food."Most times, the best way to help wildlife make it through the winter is to step back and allow the animals' instincts to take over," said Cal DuBrock, director of the Pennsylvania Game Commission's Bureau of Wildlife Management. "In a natural setting, most wildlife will change their behaviors to adapt to colder temperatures and scarcer food supplies. Supplemental feeding can alter that behavior and have detrimental, and sometimes fatal, effects."It is the official policy of the Pennsylvania Game Commission to not support the supplemental winter feeding of game birds or game animals. Here's why:DiseaseOne disease that affects deer is called Chronic Wasting Disease. It's been found in Pennsylvania deer, and the incubation period for CWD is 18 months to five years, according to PGC Wildlife Veterinarian Walt Cottrell."For some of that time before the deer ultimately becomes sick, it can be shedding the disease agent either by direct contact with another deer or indirectly by ingestion of materials from a contaminated landscape," Cottrell explained. "All deer are susceptible, there is no vaccination and the disease is always fatal.""Anyone who has a child in school knows that when individuals are brought closer together, there is an increased chance for disease to spread," he added. "And when that newly-infected student moves from the point of infection, the individual takes the disease along."That's why things that cause deer to congregate, such as supplemental feeding, cause an additional risk to the population.Vehicles, collisionsCreating a food site for deer may also create new travel patterns for the animals, pulling them across roads. The artificial food site may also cause deer to travel farther than they normally would in the winter months, causing them to burn more calories.When deer are pulled into an area with an easy food source, they will compete for it, causing additional stress."In the summer and fall, deer usually have good enough food sources that they're able to head into winter with reserves of fat," said Kip Adam, Knoxville, a biologist for the Quality Deer Management Association. "In the winter months, they don't move as much and eat less, relying on their fat reserves."How to helpAdams said that even in the summer and early fall times of plenty, more than half of the deer's diet is green leaves. But many forests aren't at the right stage of growth to benefit wildlife. Imagine going to a grocery store and finding out that 90 percent of the shelves were empty, he said."A mature, closed-canopy forest will provide 50-100 pounds of browse per acre a deer will browse twigs and stems up to five or six feet high from the ground," he explained. "A young forest will create 1,000 pounds per acre."We can help deer now, during the winter months, by dropping young saplings so that deer can browse on their tops. Deer will also benefit in the spring and summer, when they browse on the sprouts coming from the stumps of the saplings."Leaves growing from stump sprouts have a higher nutritional content than leaves from the canopy of a mature tree," Adams explained. "When a mature forest is thinned to create openings, it improves browse and improves the habitat quality for deer and other animals."During the winter months, an adult deer can survive on about five pounds of dry-weight forage per day, Adams explained. That amount would be about half of a bushel basket.Rumen acidosis can be caused by many foods other than corn. Wheat and barley also are commonly responsible for causing the disorder, while apples, grapes, bread and sugar beets can cause the disorder, but are less commonly involved. Animals severely afflicted by rumen acidosis typically die within 24 to 72 hours, but the disease might also shorten the life spans of the animals that survive the disease.