Country-Wide December 2020

DEER | YEAR IN REVIEW

Looking back and forward Country-Wide writers asked farmers how their year panned out and what they intend to do next year. in conjunction with the Canterbury and West Coast DFA to ECan on proposed Plan Change 7 to the Canterbury Land & Water Regional Plan. Battling bureaucracy and immersion into environmental politics is not something he signed up for when he took on the DFA chairman’s role.

BY: LYNDA GRAY

O

n the Peck family’s South Canterbury farm 400 stags were velveted this year. That’s about 100 more than when Country-Wide visited in 2018, and the maximum number Graham and son Duncan can comfortably velvet around the demands of tractor work and the AI of heifers during November. Since 2018 velvet weights have increased which Graham puts down mostly to genetics rather than feeding. “The trials we carried out as part of our Advance Party convinced us that we don’t need to feed out grain or nuts unless we’re short of grass. We don’t think we’re missing out and it saves us money.” The Pecks’ primary farm income is from dairy heifer trading and velvet stags, with secondary flexible income streams from beef cattle and ewe trading. They buy in up to 40 two-year-old commercial stags every year for the velvet herd. The secondstring stags have created a profitable and reasonably straight forward velvet system. Looking back on the year that’s been Graham says it’s been a seven out of 10 for

Velvetted stags on the Ross’s Waimumu farm.

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TOO BUSY FOR BOATING Graham and Duncan Peck.

the deer side of the business. Their velvetfocused deer operation has largely escaped the fallout from Covid-19. “It’s been uncomfortable for us seeing how other deer farmers have been affected. There’s been a lot of pain and I think deer farmers have been very stoic.” There aren’t great changes planned on the family’s Sterndale Valley farm, near Pleasant Point, although Graham will continue to step back while Duncan takes on more. Graham will be busy enough in his chairman role of the South Canterbury and North Otago Deer Farmers Association (SCNO). Coming up is a joint presentation

At Waimumu, near Gore Warren and Gary Ross had an above average year production-wise. The weather and growth season picked up especially during lockdown. “We were busy and got a lot of things down, the downside was that we couldn’t go boating,” Warren says. The good growing season was reflected in velvet weights. “There’s been plenty of heavy, thick velvet getting up around 10kgs so we’re happy with that.” The dampener was venison prices, although Warren is reasonably confident they will pick up in the long term. A limited number of weaners were sent for processing during the spring chilled venison season, and as many as possible were offloaded thereafter in anticipation of a further dive in price. Country-Wide profiled the Ross family’s deer, beef and dairy grazing enterprise in 2016 after altering feeding and management to control Johne’s which had struck young Red hinds during 2012-13. One of the changes was the introduction of fodder beet for the winter feeding of hinds as an adjunct to a woodlot feed pad system. The beet reduced the number of lighter weight younger hinds at the end of winter, many of which were JD suspects. The growing of beet also sped up pasture replacement, and the improved younger and higher quality pastures have also helped better maintain hind condition. Sugar beet was about to be trialled, on the recommendation of Gary’s son-in-law,

Country-Wide

December 2020