Beef + Lamb New Zealand and Deer Industry New Zealand joined forces recently to run a field day highlighting the benefits of running a mix of species within a farm system.
Key points
- Running a mix of species spreads risk, workloads and provides an alternative income stream
- Four years out of five a hind will produce more than a ewe off the same country.
- Profitability all hinges on efficiency- kilograms of product weaned.
- Deer and lamb breeding and finishing enterprises can be complementary.
- Deer, sheep and cattle don’t share the same internal parasites.
This two part-series covers the opportunities, advantages and challenges of integrating sheep, beef and deer.
Tom and Samantha (Sam) Macfarlane hosted the field day on Stanton Station, a 20,000-stock unit property they lease near Fairlie in South Canterbury. The Station is run in conjunction with The Kowhais, an 800ha finishing farm around 30km north of Fairlie.
Tom, who also sits on B+LNZ’s Northern South Island Farmer Council, says 60-70% of the stock units on Stanton Station are deer and these are run alongside 1800 ewes and 420 breeding cows.
All progeny is finished within their wider business, and they buy in two-tooth ewes as replacements.
Stanton Station covers 1500ha of which 1100ha is deer fenced. They plan to deer fence the whole property when the budget allows.
Speaking at the field day, farm consultant Wayne Allan said over 50% of his clients’ run deer and almost all incorporate other stock into their deer unit.
He says the reasons to integrate sheep and beef into a deer unit include risk management and alternative income streams, offering the potential to generate more income.
“The sheep and beef industry rolled through Covid, but it almost decimated the deer industry. Confidence in the deer industry was restored quickly post Covid, when the industry moved away from targeting high-end markets in the food service sector to retail, making venison more accessible to more people. This has made the market for venison much more robust.
Wayne says four years out of five, hinds will produce more than a ewe off the same country and there is opportunity to spread the workload with mixed species and in some cases, reduce the workload.
On many hill country farms, breeding hinds are also a better fit with the pasture growth curve than ewes.
Wayne says a ewe’s feed demand will increase from 1.3kg DM/day at tupping to 3.2kg DM/day in peak lactation when there is often not much feed available. Conversely, hinds will go into winter
requiring 2.5-3kg DM/head/day, but their feed demand will not ramp up until fawning in November which typically coincides with the spring surplus.
Hinds do however need to be fed well going into mating in March and this can be a challenge on dryland properties.
Crunching the numbers
Wayne says the time farmers make money from breeding stock is at mating and lactation, both of these drive the most important number – kilograms of product weaned.
For lambs, the six weeks post-tailing and for fawns, the January period, can kill profitability if there is not sufficient high-quality feed available to continue to drive pre-weaning growth rates. Prior to this, the ewe and the hind will buffer any feed shortages.
The system therefore needs to be set up to achieve good weaning weights and put condition back on breeding ewes and hinds going into mating. Most hinds start cycling on 10 March and will have finished in May which is when rams are going out on many hill country farms. Stock can consume a lot of feed over mating and this does need to be taken into consideration.
“Profitability all hinges on efficiency. How many kilograms of weight we have weaned.”
Looking at the gross margins of the different enterprises on Stanton Station, beef cows are returning 15c Kg/DM, which is now competing with the other stock classes. Beef cows have typically been the lowest returning stock class, but they also eat the lowest quality feed and do a valuable job maintaining feed quality.
Ewes lambing 125% return an average 16c kg DM with a range of 11.5c to 18c kg DM. Breeding hinds (put to a red stag) also generate 16c kg DM with a range of 10c-20c kg DM. If half the hinds are put to a terminal sire, then they will return around 18c kg DM.
Wayne says, with sheep, there are differences in labour costs and feed demand, particularly in late winter and these are over and above the costs considered in the gross margin. These need to be taken into consideration.
On the finishing farm, the deer are generating 26c to 35c kg DM and the lambs 27c-33c kg DM. Wayne says most finishers need to be making these returns due to their high input costs and land values.
“Many finishers will be looking for the best returns so will alter their mix of stock if they think the purchase prices are getting too high to protect a margin; as has been seen this autumn.”