McIntyre - Milking Deer
First up a wee bit of history on the farm, Pete started deer farming in about 1974 – Sharon was involved in deer research at Lincoln after Ag degree, then MAF. Farm was slowly converted to all deer and expanded to 800ac (323ha) recently with Chris joining us.
When approached about milking our children where late teenage and both very keen, or we might not have done it. Chris has been very instrumental with the milking side of things and Rhiannon took charge of fawn rearing initially and developed the practises and processes around doing that as well as assisting with milking. Both came and went a bit as studied or worked off farm. Chris has joined us in the farm partnership and Rhiannon is a contract diver in Australia with short periods at home when she helps out when possible.
Long time family farm – 157 years now with a very strong animal welfare and environmental focus on farm. Our deer farm is very special – hand reared hinds or previous milkers will pick up their fawns and bring them over to show us, Chris has done 10-12 fawnings over the years where hinds let him assist them in the paddock. Can pat deer in most paddocks – they just want some attention. 8-9 year old velveting stags that are cuddly and just want to hang with you. Care is required during the roar, but is manageable.
The home block we milk our Hinds on is 500ac or 200ha – but not all in the milking platform.
High quality pastures are important – clover, chicory, plantain etc.
Milking November to end March. Can get Dry in previous seasons in the Autumn (not this year) so the core group milked over the summer period is important.
We have Lincoln and Massey students usually including a vet student over the main part of summer then finish with back packers when the students go back to university. Have really turned some of the vet students into very passionate deer vets which is very nice to see and good for the industry.
We predominantly run hinds (500) to breed velvet replacements, and velveting stags (900) plus young replacement stock and about 60 venison young animals. We also have about 800 fallow hinds to produce spikers for two trophy outfits.
Milking started on the farm for the 2015/16 season after Graham Shaw – a NZ’er based in Australia approached us after the original milking partner John and Mary Falconer were unable to continue after year one . John Falconer was the first to give it a go and work out some of the initial aspects of how to do it, full credit to them for showing it was possible.
We still have the original pilot plant (10 stalls one sided) which is not really ideal but the cost of converting to double sided is significant.
The deer move in and out of the shed a lot like dairy cows – slowly walk to shed – sometimes stop to eat/drink. They know the routine. Occasionally can be playful.
If they didn’t want to go to the milking shed they would/could make it very difficult.
We do not milk the hand reared animals as they are too quiet.
Fawning begins early November, we do milk a core group from that date and rear the fawns (both male and female), fawns are about two days of age so have had colostrum but are young enough to adapt to feeding quickly. In mid February we add additional hinds after they have reared their fawns. Hinds are fed nuts in the stalls.
Some of our hinds which were mixed age in year one have been milked for 9 years now. Hinds are long lived 12 years or more is not unusual. If they are good milkers they stay in the potential milking mob.
The deer milk is supplied in partnership to Pāmu who have commercialised several products in food service, cosmetics, supplement, and nutritional categories. A recent clinical trial found that regularly consuming Pāmu Deer Milk improves the nutritional status, muscle mass and physical function of women aged 65 and above. It is also proving popular for gifting throughout Asia.
Getting the systems in place was certainly intellectually challenging with lots of problem solving at the start as there is no deer specific gear so lots of adaptions and novel solutions. It was very stimulating. Lots of risk management processes/recording and auditing for export & Staff training.
