TikTok loves Berks man’s pet deer in costumes
Tristan Kochel’s short quirky videos of his pandemic pet deer have gained a following of 1.4 million and amassed 66 million likes on TikTok.
Kochel, 21, is a business major at Albright College where he is on the baseball team as a pitcher and middle infielder. He is Gov. Mifflin High School graduate.
He said his family had been feeding wild deer outside of his house when they joked that he should get a pet deer. Then, COVID hit and the idea seemed more appealing. They got fences and contacted a few captive deer farms.
“TikTok came as a surprise to me,” he said. “The first video I posted was a huge surprise. I never thought I’d get to the point I’d have 1.3 million followers. That’s a crazy amount to me. I started posting and people started responding.”
They called him “the deer guy.”
For context, TikTok, based in China, has more than 1 billion users worldwide. The K-Pop group BTS has 44.9 million followers.
The top TikTok accounts have tens of millions of followers. A million is considered a desirable threshold in marketing terms and can lead to sponsorships and other ways to make money. Most TikTok users play to a much smaller audience.
Kochel’s July 2020 video of a bleating baby deer playing hide and seek has hit 7.1 million likes. Well, Kochel was hiding and the baby, named Belle, was seeking in his kitchen in Union Township.
A few days later, he posted a video dancing with Belle to Taylor Swift’s “Love Story,” commenting “To all the people who reported me to the game commission… I still have my deer! Also, thanks to all the reports the game warden follows me #deer.”
He went on to chronicle adopting other deer, Lily and Daisy. (He now has six) The one video of a deer eating Cheez-It crackers gained 2 million likes. Yes, he is licensed to own pet deer and has to check in with authorities annually.
Feeling the love from fans, Kochel started putting costumes on Lily, like a bumble bee. Basically, he said the costumes are children’s costumes he or his mom,
Lisa Kochel, find on sale.
Yes, they may look like generic deer to some viewers, but Kochel knows them well.
“The way I tell them apart is their personality,” he said.
Some are goofy or shy and some are more friendly while others are skittish around other people.
Kochel lives on about 4.5 acres with his parents and siblings. The deer live in a fenced in area. They eat clover, grass and a special food mix he buys from a mill. They also like bananas, apples, melons and other fruits and nuts.
“A lot of people don’t understand about keeping deer,” Kochel said. “It’s not a bad life for them. They’re safe. They’re not getting hunted. They’re pets just like any other pets.”
The Department of Agriculture checks on the deer annually, inspecting to see that he has not added deer to or released deer from his herd without approval. He has a couple of different permits for them.
He’s starting to be recognized and now he is taking his deer fame to a new food truck business. It’s called Pip and Lily’s loaded tater tots. The logo is Lily, the deer who wears costumes, in a chef’s hat.
The food truck may be the most surprising thing the deer have brought into his life, but Kochel remains surprised when people recognize him. At one food truck event a few kids clamored to get photos with him.
The challenge is to keep coming up with video ideas and following the trends on TikTok. He tries to post once a day.
“They’re definitely my favorite animals,” Kochel said. “Being in the French Creek (State Park) area there’s a lot of them. I think they are the coolest animals.”