A deer farm (technically a

ranch A ranch (from es, rancho/Mexican Spanish) is an area of land, including various structures, given primarily to ranching, the practice of raising grazing livestock such as cattle and sheep. It is a subtype of a farm. These terms are most often ...

) is fenced piece of a land suitable for grazing that is populated with

deer Deer or true deer are hoofed ruminant mammals forming the family Cervidae. The two main groups of deer are the Cervinae, including the muntjac, the elk (wapiti), the red deer, and the fallow deer; and the Capreolinae, including the reindeer ...

species, such as

elk The elk (''Cervus canadensis''), also known as the wapiti, is one of the largest species within the deer family, Cervidae, and one of the largest terrestrial mammals in its native range of North America and Central and East Asia. The common ...

moose The moose (in North America) or elk (in Eurasia) (''Alces alces'') is a member of the New World deer subfamily and is the only species in the genus ''Alces''. It is the largest and heaviest extant species in the deer family. Most adult mal ...

reindeer Reindeer (in North American English, known as caribou if wild and ''reindeer'' if domesticated) are deer in the genus ''Rangifer''. For the last few decades, reindeer were assigned to one species, ''Rangifer tarandus'', with about 10 subspe ...

, or especially

white-tailed deer The white-tailed deer (''Odocoileus virginianus''), also known as the whitetail or Virginia deer, is a medium-sized deer native to North America, Central America, and South America as far south as Peru and Bolivia. It has also been introduced t ...

, raised as

livestock Livestock are the domesticated animals raised in an agricultural setting to provide labor and produce diversified products for consumption such as meat, eggs, milk, fur, leather, and wool. The term is sometimes used to refer solely to animals ...

New Zealand New Zealand ( mi, Aotearoa ) is an island country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It consists of two main landmasses—the North Island () and the South Island ()—and over 700 smaller islands. It is the sixth-largest island count ...

is the largest supplier of farm-raised

venison Venison originally meant the meat of a game animal but now refers primarily to the meat of antlered ungulates such as elk or deer (or antelope in South Africa). Venison can be used to refer to any part of the animal, so long as it is edible, in ...

. , New Zealand had approximately 3,500

intensive In grammar, an intensive word form is one which denotes stronger, more forceful, or more concentrated action relative to the root on which the intensive is built. Intensives are usually lexical formations, but there may be a regular process for for ...

deer farms, with an estimated stock of 1.7 million deer.

Deer farming

Large-scale commercial farming of deer originated in New Zealand, and that country still has the world's most advanced deer farming industry. Deer are not native to New Zealand. The first deer were brought to the country from England and Scotland for sport in the mid to late 19th century, and released mainly in the Southern Alps and surrounding

foothills Foothills or piedmont are geographically defined as gradual increases in elevation at the base of a mountain range, higher hill range or an upland area. They are a transition zone between plains and low relief hills and the adjacent topograp ...

. The environment proved ideal, and the uncontrolled introduced populations grew to high numbers. By the middle of the 20th century, these nonnative deer were regarded as

pests PESTS was an anonymous American activist group formed in 1986 to critique racism, tokenism, and exclusion in the art world. PESTS produced newsletters, posters, and other print material highlighting examples of discrimination in gallery represent ...

because of their impact on the native forests. From the 1950s, ''deer cullers'' were employed by the government to keep the numbers in check. The export of

from wild deer started in the 1960s, turning a pest into an

export An export in international trade is a good produced in one country that is sold into another country or a service provided in one country for a national or resident of another country. The seller of such goods or the service provider is an ...

earner. Industry pioneers saw an opportunity to build on this base, and in the early 1970s started capturing live deer from the wild and farming them. A new industry was born and rapidly spread throughout New Zealand, and later to the United States and Canada.

Fears of chronic wasting disease

Since chronic wasting disease (CWD), a transmissible spongiform encephalopathy similar to mad cow disease, can pass from wild populations of deer to farmed deer, there has been some fear of contamination of the food supply. Recently, as of 2014, cases of CWD have been found in both farmed and wild

cervids Deer or true deer are hoofed ruminant mammals forming the family Cervidae. The two main groups of deer are the Cervinae, including the muntjac, the elk (wapiti), the red deer, and the fallow deer; and the Capreolinae, including the reindeer ...

in the US and western Canada. New Zealand is free of CWD. The New Zealand Ministry for Primary Industries undertakes an extensive testing programme which would identify the disease if it occurred in the national deer herd.

References

External links

Deer farming reference: Regulations, Deer Farm Directory and information.

—′A beginners reference to starting a deer farm′

World of Deer Museum New Zealand
{{Webarchive, url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201022142701/https://worldofdeer.com/museum/ , date=2020-10-22 Livestock Deer

Deer farming

Fears of chronic wasting disease

See also

References

External links