The Accidental Smallholder Forum
Livestock => Other => Topic started by: Oly on February 22, 2013, 01:05:19 pm
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Just wondering if anyone on here farms/ranches deer? With awareness, demand and prices of venison increasing it is an option. OK so fencing is a cost, but then they are pretty self sufficient and have few illnesses etc to cause undue extra bills. As a qualified stalker I can process them myself and would have the pleasure of observing them daily too. A professional stalker I know ranches a small number, enabling him to suppliment lean times in the stalking season with his own ranched supply - reckons it's the easiest money he makes!
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Fencing is a big cost also there is no SFP for deer farming currently tho that may change in 2014. One big factor tho is vandalism from animal rights people, cutting fenced etc (some of them don't agree with farming deer)
But we really ought to eat more of it in the uk.
Rather than dodgy foreign horse meat.
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Poaching I think would be the main concern, but we will live right next to the field they would be in. SFP isn't an issue as we're not that big to bother with it. Would only be 3 or 4 animals really. It is already very popular given that the UK is now a net importer as the domestic supply isn't enough (even with a growing deer population)!
500 new deer farms needed was the news a little while back (the programme doesn't work but the blurb below states it in brief) - http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01c6j19 (http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01c6j19)
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I don't really agree with your statement of when they are penned they are pretty much self sufficiant. Every place i know of in my area (fife) Feeds the deer, Silage and pellets aswell as carrots throughout the year as the grass alone will not hold a healthy population.
Nor do i agree with your illness statement. They need to be wormed regularly aswell as treated for liver fluke, or wetter seaons are creating a huge problem. Our local deadstock collector was down on the farm and was saying he had just collected 10 reds all died of fluke.
I really would think carefully before venturing into this. Also if you are a stalker you will notice the difference between wild vension and the farmed stuff!
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There was a bit on last weeks country file on deer farming and they were fed nuts I am sure.
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This would hopefully not be your experience with them, maybe more of an example of how wrong deer farming could go. It's certainly a worst case scenario. A lot of people farm deer around here, and there's a lot of theft and pointless poaching, such as just killing the animals for the fun of it and leaving the meat, sometimes taking the antlers, often just massacring them because they're a pest. Once 70-odd deer were machine-gunned and dog-hounded into a dam on the farm I'm speaking of. (Yes, the machine gun is illegal in private hands here, but who listens to that? Law abiding folk, that's all).
My brother lives on a deer farm, and there's endless problems of every sort. The farm, which belongs to his landlord, runs fallow of four or five different but now mixed strains, as well as chital, reds, rusa, and a few other species of deer. The landlord doesn't manage their genetics, just lets them breed at will. The fallows are all chronically inbred, there's many spikers among all species there, and those with semi-correct antlers have badly misshapen forms and don't have symmetrical tine placement as well as missing most of their tines. The fallow include charcoal, spotless, beige/cream, white, and a few normals. There's a few cross-species hybrids too. The deer all routinely attack one another, including the stags killing and mutilating the does. They're all scarred terribly and the farm supports an enormous population of scavengers that have no need to hunt due to the constant presence of dead deer, from violence as well as lethal spiker genes. If they were mine I'd cull the lot, they're so bad genetically, never mind their attitudes.
The deer are meant to roam, so if you pen them they'll need a huge amount of land or supplementing. They're given stock licks and lucerne once they show signs of starving on this 'farm'. The stags can be some of the most dangerous livestock known to man, once they lose that wild fear of humans. They're a life-threatening animal to try to handle or manage in any way, and truly vicious, especially if cornered, but the stags will come running from acres away to try to kill you. There's almost nothing you can do to escape or intimidate them. They kill dogs and the goats on the property, and basically anything that they can. They go over and under the deer fencing if they can, to get you. This is regardless of gender and the time of season. They're mangy, scarred, wormy, incredibly aggressive, not handled or treated in any way at all except when guided into a truck to be sold to be butchered, and the way the landlord gets them into the truck is to offer himself as prey and escape through trick concealed doors in the tunnels. His son copped a deer's hoof through his lower jaw and into his skull, barely survived. If you look directly at them, they charge to attack, no matter the distance. A semi-tame deer is so much different to a wild deer. People say bottle-fed and hand-reared stags are the worst of all.
One other deer I was familiar with as a child was a doe of a quite small species, not sure which, but she went from a little girl's pet to a vicious unprovocated hoof-stabbing mauler who was not able to be handled and would bite like a dog. And on the other hand, there's a big professional deer farm not far from here, where they manage to hand-feed some of their deer, but still have issues with very aggressive stags and hence the sheer danger levels of managing the animals properly. Staff will die, it's just an occupational hazard.
In future I'd like to 'keep' deer, but since they're wild all over Australia, I wouldn't officially obtain any, I'd just go hunting for my meat. I've got a pretty good eye for phenotypical expression of defective genes, so I'd manage their genetics the good old fashioned land-steward's way... I'd eat those unfit to breed. Bugger farming them! There's also great demand for, and money in, crops of both animals and plants that don't threaten your life so consistently, as a rule. They're so much safer wild.
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Apparently there will be limited SFP available for deer farming under the New reformed system.
On the minus side the TB incidence in the wild population is growing, which could impact on captive bred flocks.
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There are two commercial deer farms within a few miles of me, run very differently.
One has gone along the public access route, with different types of deer penned separately and closely managed, it's become a tourist attraction over the years and recently diversified into other species including wolves, birds of prey, wildcats etc, plus flying demos, a courtyard of shops, cafe etc etc. They sell venison in one of the shops as a sideline to the main business which I guess is the tourist and school trade. www.tsdc.co.uk
The other runs deer on a hill farm off the beaten track and over huge acreage of well deer-fenced grazing. The public can go up to buy venison and it's supplied elsewhere to restaurants etc, but you don't get to buy a bag of feed to handfeed and pet the deer, they're managed semi-wild and culled onsite in their fields. They don't have the public driving around their enclosures but are more of a farm animal in terms of management - and do get fed in winter like most stock around here they'd not survive weather and natural challenges once confined even to that extent. Apparently they get hay and potatoes! John and Nichola Fletcher run this one and John has spoken on the farming of deer as I recall, tho I've not met him myself http://seriouslygoodvenison.co.uk/ (http://seriouslygoodvenison.co.uk/)
I would get in touch with either or both of these, and others who already farm deer on either model and decide what the pros and cons are for the land you're considering using, the type of model you intend and so on.
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our neighbour farms deer and he feeds nuts, silage, hay and haylage. its amazing to watch at rutting time as wild deer come to compete with his own herd stags.
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I've just posted details in the Events section about an event in Cupar on 4th September, aimed at people looking to get into deer farming.
Whilst probably aimed at large scale producers, these sort of events are normally useful to smallholders as well. Only £14 for the day, to include your food.
I would note that I'm not associated with the event - just happenned to read about it in the weekly NFUS newsletter - so I only know what I've posted under the event heading ;D
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Hi all we used to keep horses at a deer farm they are more work than people think as being enclosed they will need hay and pellets he used to give potatoes now and again, he did have problems with neighbours and vandals as they attract wild stags through rutting season also any stags you keep become agressive even if you think they are tame and ok(as the old man found out when hin charged him whilst haying them if wasnt for the bale of hay in front of him the antlers would have gone straight through him), his herd also picked up TB and was culled when he got an new herd they picked up some sort of virus in which a few died, but other than that he thorughly enjoyed it, we just year before last rehomed his last deer who was tame at the tender age of 14 to a deer rescue where she has gone on to produce 2 young stags.