12 | Aratiatia Station’s deer milking project Prior to the first milking the team at Aratiatia prepared the deer by getting them accustomed to coming into the shed. In 2020, the team began constructing their first custom designed and built deermilking parlour. Sue Russell RURAL PEOPLE » Aratiatia Farm Pãmu (Landcorp) have for many years now been pursuing the commercial milking of red deer as a viable dairy product to market in New Zealand and overseas. Aratiatia Station, near Taupo, is the first property within the Pāmu collective of farms throughout the country, to develop the infrastructure and technique to harvest milk from specially chosen red deer, sourced from both the North and South Island. Mason Jones manages the deer operation at Aratiatia Station, coming from a background of working with commercial deer farms. He’s been with Aratiatia Station two years and says this is an exciting new development of activity on the farm. Prior to establishing the milking herd at Aratiatia Pāmu engaged for several years with the McIntyre family on their Benio Farm in Southland who have been milking red deer with some success. In 2020, Pāmu began constructing their first custom designed and built deer-milking parlour, an exciting time for those on the station. Prior to the first milking the team at Aratiatia prepared the deer by getting them accustomed to coming into the shed and eating grain as well as being feed grain outside. Observing which deer enjoyed being inside the shed and were happy to be cupped for milking meant that some deer were rejected from the milking herd. “It’s really important the deer are happy and calm in the shed and when being milked, so we took out time looking carefully at which ones were happy and which ones weren’t,” Mason explains. Last year was the first season for milking the deer, which takes place after the fawn has naturally weaned was a real pioneering moment for Pāmu and the team at Aratiatia Station, home also to drystock and sheep. “I remember the first time we put cups on a row of deer in the shed, none of them kicked, so we really felt we had come a long way in habituating them to being milked regularly.” The milking shed has two sides to it and this year, in its second season of milking, has produced 6000 litres. At peak, 125 hinds were milked between 10th January and 15th April. Asked, now that milking has been established, what is most important to be focussing on Mason says its going to be about fine-tuning identification of the genetic values that input into those hinds producing the best milk. “At the moment the sole thing we are selecting on is temperament but next season we will be able to select more on milk yield. Establishing deer milking is a process that can’t be hurried but so far we have achieved a lot and its gone really well with support of places like AgResearch.” Milk from the deer at Aratiatia is destined so far for places like South Korea and Vietnam where it is used in the cosmetics/skin-care industries. Here in New Zealand the milk is currently used at restaurants as an ingredient in desserts. Pāmu deer milk has already received the nod from judges at the prestigious Massey University New Zealad Food Awards and the NZ Food Awards. Research, using a controlled sample of people, is also underway at this time on the nutritional and health benefits derived from taking deer milk. This will clinically evidence the benefits deer milk provide and help inform the future development of consumer products and markets. Asked why he enjoys working with deer Mason says they are just a very different animal from any other, requiring respect, care and understanding. “You would never feel that they are completely domesticated and they must be handled accordingly. They have to want to be milked and so the selection of our milking herd is a slow and careful process.” He’s especially proud to think that within a short space of time the project has moved very much from start up to a fully operational activity at Aratiatia. “We’re at the start of a really exciting era in the farming of deer for milk and Pāmu has realised its great potential.”
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