Deer helps reduce farm workload

09-02-2009 | Not Specified

One of the big advantages of deer for Hamish Mackay is that they are easy-care.

"The workload in the deer is so much less; if we didn't have 1500 stock units in deer I couldn't run the farm by myself."

Over winter the hinds are run on a self-feeding silage pit, a system that Hamish says works very well.

All the mixed-age hinds are run together and the feeding gates are simply shifted every four to five days. These gates are modified deer gates.

Over the two years Hamish has wintered hinds on this system he has not had to pull any light hinds out.

He says there is a pecking order and some fighting but the hinds tend to work it out themselves.

The face of the pit is 15m long-so there is plenty of room and whenever he drives past there are animals feeding at the face of the pit, so all the hinds are eating at some stage of the day.

The weaner hinds are wintered on grass and lucerne baleage and the weaner stags are given swedes and have ad-lib access to baleage to help push growth rates along.

In spring they are given good quality autumn-saved pasture that has a predominance of red clover.

Hamish has found the weaner stags do particularly well on red clover and the growth rates on those paddocks are very good.

With all the deer Hamish ensures they have access to fresh water and supplements their diet with copper sulphate and selenium.

Copper is put in the troughs every week and the deer get a multi-mineral injection two to three times a year.

The Mackays grow a crop of barley every year and it is all kept for use on the deer farm.

When Country-Wide visited the farm in the middle of January, Hamish had just started feeding a small amount of barley to the hinds and fawns.

This allows the hinds to teach their fawns to eat barley so it can be fed to the weaners in autumn.

As they don't use Yersinovax, because of the expense, Hamish likes to ensure the weaners are going ahead before the colder months and are therefore less susceptible to the disease.

Sheep are not run on the deer unit as Hamish believes they compete with deer, however cattle complement deer and are used to control pasture quality.

Not long after the family bought the farm, Hamish and Anna introduced 60 Hereford breeding cows into the mix of stock; a decision which drew a few sideway glances amongst some locals.

However the cows fit the farm system well and after calving, at the start of August, the cows are rotated around behind the ewes and lambs doing what Hamish describes as a brilliant job at maintaining pasture quality.

The calves are weaned in March at an average of 300kg and these are all kept for finishing. Hamish will buy in replacement in-calf heifers when the need arises.

Over winter the cows are kept on light rations and are used to clear up laneways and similar areas. In late winter they are given some hay and over calving their pasture is supplemented with good quality baleage.

They are roughly in the centre of the South Island-not too far from Christchurch or Wanaka- and everything they need on the farm is available in nearby Timaru.

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