Technology, monitoring paying off for deer farmers

Cameron Nicolson says intensive weighing and recording are paying dividends on his Ida Valley deer farm. Photo / Phil Stewart

Deer farming may conjure up images of helicopter capture, but those days are long gone.

Today's deer farmers are focused on making their deer herds more productive and profitable using the latest farm technology.

Pania Flint, co-ordinator of the deer industry's Advance Party programme, said deer farmers were using a range of useful tools to record and analyse their herds' performance.

Cameron Nicolson, who farms 350 red breeding hinds in Ida Valley with wife Amy, is typical of many farmers in the programme.

Members of the Otago Advance Party, the Nicolsons intensively weigh and monitor their wapiti crossbred weaners to make sure they are reaching target weights for spring slaughter.

"It's paying dividends. Each extra kilogram of weaning weight is worth $6 to us because it translates to an earlier slaughter date," Mr Nicolson said.

The Nicolsons were motivated by the price premium for supplying the chilled venison market in spring, as well as the need to get animals off the property before the dry Ida Valley summer kicked in.

Last winter they achieved average weight gains of 115g a day with a top rate of 150g/day, and were pleased to have 93% of their yearling stags processed by late October.

This year, they had added barley to the turnips, grass and baleage feed regime and had been achieving growth rates as high as 260g/day.

Advance Parties were jointly funded by Deer Industry NZ (DINZ) and the Ministry for Primary Industries' Sustainable Farming Fund.

They were based on the principle farmers could help other farmers make the management changes needed to increase the profitability of their farm businesses.

They worked in tandem with Passion2Profit (P2P), a Primary Growth Partnership (PGP) programme between DINZ and MPI.

Each Advance Party member identified an opportunity on their farm and developed a plan for addressing it with the help of the other members.

To participate, farmers must commit themselves to make management changes and record the results.

Winter feeding had been a recent focus, but all aspects of deer management were being examined by programme members.

It could be as varied as using a new pasture mix, better genetics for fast growth or better monitoring of animal health.

To build their records, Ms Flint said many Advance Party farmers now routinely used systems such as Gallaghers Livestock Manager TSi 2, its Orange Box Weigh Scale and Data Recorder, or Tru-Tests XR5000 weigh scales.

"Regular weighing of young deer from the time they are weaned is becoming more commonplace and many farmers are now taking advantage of the Nait electronic identification eartags to record mob averages or keep individual animal records," she said.

Some were using farm management information systems such as FarmIQ and the feed budgeting and financial analysis service, Farmax.

Many also used the deer industry's genetics database, Deer Select, which allowed buyers to identify sires based on estimated breeding values.

The industry had established key performance indicators farmers could use to set targets and measure their performance and they were available to all deer farmers, she said.

Farmers such as the Nicolsons were making progress by collating information on the performance of their own deer enterprises but there was still the potential to extract more value out of the information that could be recorded, Ms Flint said.