Peter Allan talks about the venison market during times of political uncertainty due to the US elections.
Well you know that.
Wednesday afternoon. This is a muster on Hakanui heading out to the glen Ure at bal for a Northern Southland Peter Allen deer farmer up that way and been in the industry for quite a long time now and we catch up once a month or so with Pete. Good afternoon house.
Thanks, Yeah, pretty good, Andy. Yes, I have been in the industry a while. I was just reflecting on some of the early days not very long ago to somebody. Yeah, over forty five years deer farming, so that that just makes me an old bugger.
Really forty five years. What was a catalyst for you to break into the industry.
Initially, I was fascinated with deer and that was pretty much it, and I never really envisaged getting, you know, rich on deer.
It was just a fascination of working with the animals. I started off with fellow then I had a few hybrids, and I've been Eastern European reds and then predominantly English cross reads for the last few years. So that's what's kept me going. Every now and then they frustrate you a little bit, but no, I still enjoy working with them.
So the passion and the drive is still there for the industry.
I suppose absolutely. Yeah, No, you've got to like what you're doing, that's for sure.
That's the key thing that they're getting rich on. It's still work in progress.
Progress as far.
As on the farm though, are we're getting through July now, how have you found it?
Yeah, pretty good. We're quite late putting animals on croppy are both mix stage velvet and stags and the mix stage hinds. After weaning, they don't go on till quite late because we take them right through the end of October for the hinds and stags well through September through their button drop. But we have far better crops of turnips this year, so in a new variety of New York purple top turnips, and they've been fantastic. So, you know, maybe the first time in thirty years that I want to speak too soon, but we may have excess crop, which is a really good problem. But you know, the baylage that are feed out for three months prior to that, they were going through that very well, far too well. But it's slowed right up and it's pretty easy going at the moment. I've just got another break to shift of hines today, but they're lasting like ten twelve days, which is wonderful.
Any reason you choose turnips over sweets just because of the country.
Or the climate, Yeah, we bulk sow everything, and you don't tend to get a good strike of swedes. If you bulk sewing. You have to either ridge them, drill them, you know, no different to botder beat, and then you have to treat them well after that. Whereas your turnip's here easier on the teeth. For deer as well, it's a little bit more longevity. But this particular turnip has done well and they're loving it, so all good. And one of the things I said to you off here, we just did some pregnancy testing the other day, and a lot of deer farmers are doing that this time of the year. Some deer farmers will test their whole herd, in other words, not just their first corners, but depending on you know, how they feel about how the mating season went and how dry their autumn was, and' up all the rest of it. What we've done, Andy, is the last few years we've gone away from annual testing of firstborners, primarily because we were getting ninety eight ninety nine percent anyway, so it wasn't really worth doing it. But what we've done the last ten years is test an annual draft mob of hinds that are a snapshot of all of our breeding hinds. In other words, as you know, ten percent fifteen percent of each of the mobs in that sale mob. So we did that just two days ago and Andrew cochran from Northern South in Vetz. So I think even Andrew was surprised that we've got one hundred percent pregnant. So that was good.
Well, I say, one hundred percent is the apeadom of peak performance.
Yeah, and dear, that's that you just don't get any better. So that kind of answered all the questions. So I don't have to go back through individual moles because we do single sire mate here and we do back up the stags about the twenty second of April, put the backup stags out for a month and take them out so we can ascertain any lates as well. But that didn't happen, so that was all good news.
Twins are rare, say indeed.
About one to two percent. It had a really unusual thing happen here last year, picked up the skeletal remains of a dead hind Churse three months after she had passed away falling, and there was twins stuck in the Pewervic region, both coming at once, but she also had a third one as well, and it was quite evident and obvious what it was. So she was carrying three and died accordingly. So that's mother Nature's way of just getting rid of multiple births. But no, we do get quite a few live twins, well one to two percent normally.
As far as the industry, though at South Pate we talk about on a regular basis of various correspondence, what are we seeing looking forward?
Yeah, Venison at the moment, there's quite a bit of talk of those that are specialists venison finishing are probably already locked in contracts that coincides with chilled season from September right through to November, and there's a lot of ten dollar plus contracts, albeit for a short period of time. And there are always hooks and barbs and constraints with the supply there, but that's solid enough. And I see that there's a new project been launched a few weeks ago into North America from Dinn's our interim chief executive, Rhys Griffiths, and a personal opinion, I wish he'd actually stay there. He's a very very good person in that job. He's head of Velveting and Venison at the moment, but he's stepped into the chair for various reasons. But anyway, they've launched this what they call, I think a retail accelerated project that they launched earlier last month, and all the other venison companies have now come on board. I think it's about a five million dollar project. So all your venison companies, You've got your Alliance Group, Silver Fern's First Light Foods which is based up in Hawks Bay, Duncan Venison, and Mountain River Venison that are require. As I said to you last time, all our venison has gone through Duncan Venison and they have been North American market for over twenty years. So nothing much is going to change there for them. And as I said to you off air, a lot of this could well be negated by mister Trump getting back into pair because one of the first things that he's going to implement is another ten percent tariff on all imported projects. So a little bit I watched the space and cross the fingers.
Really and as well you want to make comments about any his fits. Of course we talked to a team on a regular basis here, but you've got quite an involvement with that organization as well.
Yeah. I've worn a lot of hats in the dear industry and have retired from a lot of those positions Andy, but I've been on the Northern South and Ventnory executive for thirty odd years and I've been in the chair for a couple of years and we've got AGM coming up next Tuesday the thirtieth, and a lot of farmers aren't aware that farmer members are actually allowed to come along to that AGM the most welcome and normally it's a fairly quiet and straightforward AGM, and some of the executive probably think they don't do a lot, but it doesn't lessen the importance of being on the executive And no I was going to give a shout out to one of our wonderful executive members, Helen Chrissy, but there was a lovely article in local paper recently about it that was going to cover everything about Helen going to a seventh Olympics, which is pretty pretty special and she's a valued member of the executive.
That's no means they's seven Olympics, holy heck.
Yeah, and she's the only one from the Southern hemisage. Yeah, he's under the umbrella of the Olympic Committee, not the High Performance Sport. But no shout out to Helen and I hope I'm looking forward to the Olympics. But look Andy getting back onto the NS veats. It's quite a unique setup that we've got and the more that I talk to different veterinary entities around the country, there's probably no two veterinary entities that have got the same structure. We've got a VET practice whereby the vets have skin in the game, we have a CEO. There's eleven vets at Northern South and nine basin Riversdale and two in Tiana and there's the opportunity for all of the vets over a period of time to gain a shareholding along with the manager. And we've just been incredibly lucky over the last twenty years is that we've had a really really good team of not only vets but management and it's made our job on the executive quite easy really, although you know, over the last thirty years we've built two new premises and that also helps attract and maintain staff there as well. But one of the other key things in Northern South and when you look around the rest of the country is we've got the diverse range of livestock to work with, so you're not stuck with one thing all the time, which is off putting for a lot of the other vet practices. We've got beef, sheep, dairy, deer, equine, so any young vets that have come onto the practice. We've also offered a scholarship to try and retain and attract young vets and we've got two fantastic new vets in the last couple of years. So no, it's a great system and it's just the privilege to be part of it. Onwards to upwards.
Better leave it, dear Pete, We always appreciate your time here.
Thanks Andy, Peter Ellen Dear.
Farming at the Glenure. This is the muster on a Wednesday afternoon. Catching up with Bryce McKenzie, co founder of Groundsburre, New Zealand. Up next