Big numbers but deer a perfect fit

01-10-2009 | Marie Taylor

Deer are the perfect fit for Rangitaiki Station's pasture growth curve.

The Central Plateau climate with its long cold winters and late springs is turned to advantage by Landcorp's largest deer farm.

Rangitaiki Station manager Ross Shepherd says the pasture growth pattern suits the demands of a breeding unit.

And what a breeding unit: in the 1900ha there are 9800 hinds, including a recorded wapiti herd of 350 and an elite group of 450 stud red deer.

Alongside this part of the farm is 1500ha used to finish 6500 weaners. The finishing block also integrates lamb finishing and other stock.

This makes Rangitaiki, with 3400ha of land deer fenced, the country's largest deer farm, and arguably, the world's largest deer farm.

But that's certainly not a big deal for Ross and his staff, who don't make a fuss about all the zeroes. "Most people's eyes glaze over at the numbers," Ross says.

His 18-strong team is used to dealing with big numbers - for example, they have 435 paddocks, farm 82,000 stock units, including a flock of 22,000 Romney ewes, and they wean just over 30,000 lambs. This year they are expecting around 138% lambing.

They also have a herd of 1400 Angus breeding cows, and their steer progeny form a buffer because they are finished in good years. Ross is also more than happy to trade them, which gives the farm some flexibility.

They also take in grazing - last year 1600 dairy heifers from other Landcorp farms were grazed, and similar numbers or more are expected this year.

Deer make up only about a third of the carrying capacity on the enormous farm, which stretches out over 8300ha of effective grazing land in the Matea Road district on the Rangitaiki Plains.

Their deer business is split into a breeding unit and a finishing unit: the breeding unit is inside the Matea Road loop, the finishing unit outside it.

The workload is divided between breeding unit manager Nathan Coote and finishing unit manager Anaru Harmer.

Helping Nathan is shepherd Ed Karaitiana, and working with Anaru is shepherd Glen Wilcox. Fencer general Chris Coughlin works across both units.

Ross says deer numbers are stable at the moment, although some Landcorp farms down south have been expanding their numbers.

He estimates about 80% of the stock units inside the deer fences are made up of deer, and 20% other stock.

Four years ago Ross, who has a sheep and beef background, moved south from Sweetwater Station in Northland. He's seen the deer policy stabilise, including a big jump in numbers finished, replacing the former store policy.

In 2000, the farm ran only 1200 hinds, and numbers have built up from then.

"Once we started using wapiti sires we moved our kill of yearlings finished before Christmas from 30% to 73%."

Now the older 40% of the herd are mated to wapiti sires, and 60% to red stags.

The hybrid vigour from the wapiti red cross has produced faster growth rates, and allows faster finishing. For example a mob of wapiti cross stag fawns grazing Goliath rape this June and July were doing 135g/day.

The weaners are weighed every month when they come in for drenching, with a 90kg liveweight target.

All the deer are processed through Silver Fern Farms at Rotorua, and last year made a 53.5kg average carcase. In a good year they start killing the weaners in July, and go through until March.

Adding wapiti into the mix has been a great move for the farm, especially because it frees up land for them to focus on finishing lambs after Christmas.

January isn't a good time for staff to have holidays. From January 10, just over 30,000 lambs are weaned and shorn, followed by ewe shearing. The weaned lambs then become the focus of the farm.

By the end of March any yearling deer are gone to make room for the ewe lambs and the new crop of weaner deer. Ross expects the deer policy to continue, with fine-tuning of the integration of sheep and cattle into the unit.

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