Where do antlers get their colour?


Where do antlers get their colour?

 

Do you know where the stags get the colouration from in the antlers? 

When stags have grown their antlers, and they’ve reached the stage where they start to shed their velvet (they’re in tatters), they feel quite itchy - like humans with a scab. To alleviate the itch, the stags thrash their antlers up and down tree branches, stripping the bark. That’s where the deep brown, muddy, colouration on the antlers originates. A natural dye job from the sap and bark of an itch-relieving tree!