i honestly have just been lucky, i am growing in my back yard, in a fairly populated nieghborhood, so other that a few coons and an oppossum or two and neighborhood cats i dont have to worry about the deer or anything really harmfull. when they were comin up as seedlings until about a week ago when they hit my knee i had a piece of 1/2in sq. fencing that i cut into strips and made the strips into tubes and just placed it over the seedlings, i figured they r big enough now that even if a bird get a hold of it, its not gonna harm it as for anything else i have a big ass dog so she has pretty much ran any form of crawling walking wildlife away from my yard. but i do have an ant problem that i need to fix before it gets worse, but the r so bad around here i dont know how to fix just one small area, i have been told that i will never get rid of them, they r just to bad around here.