Laurie posted back a couple of years about food being scarce for the deer so they started on her iris.

I planted a lot of divisions of Indian Chief last summer at my rental cottage next door, which is not fenced. They pulled out a couple trying them, but mostly left them alone. There are still some there I planted many years ago. They'll taste something new, or take some bites now and then (as reassurance that they don't like them?)

We have loads of deer around here & the only time they have ever tried my iris is first thing in the spring, when the irises are just starting leaves & almost the only new green thing in sight. Besides daffodil leaves, which are toxic.

As it is just a bite or two here & there, I don't mind that much. It is well before the buds are coming up.

Now, if they only felt that way about daylilies!

Deer mostly don't like iris, but some will eat them. If you get a young one around, they try everything. They really like bean plants, pepper plants, tulips, fruit trees, and daylilies more than iris.

The deer around here eat my black iris and the purple ones. I have to keep those fenced.

They don't eat the yellow ones.

My turkeys just discovered that they can fly over the fence protecting my named iris collection, and they are eating the leaves off of those. Now I have to figure out how to keep them out of there. Those iris are well protected from the deer and rabbits, but apparently not from high flying birds.

I should not have said that the deer don't eat my yellow iris. They just ate, to the ground, over a hundred yellow iris plants that are along the end of my driveway.

I sure do not like to hear that oregon. I just planted 12 bearded iris yesterday. I do have a deer problem, but I do hope they stay away from my new bearded iris. I am limited with the plants I can have. If the deer don't eat it, the rabbits do.

It all depends how hungry they are. Iris is not a preferred menu item. But then again, if they are hungry they will eat! Hey, last year was a very bad year for acorns, and both deer and squirrel were hungry. The squirrel ate my jack o' lantern on the porch in the fall! The deer do not like rhizome at all, but they will eat the leaves. Unfortunately they sometimes yank the rhizome out of the ground, eat the leaves and spit the rhizome...wherever! It is usually in one piece with no bites, but I find it laying in a strange bed, nameless and lost.

We have lots of deer and rabbits. So far they have left my bearded irises alone. They do munch on lots of my other plants.