| 33 Small deer business making a big splash Aimee Wilson Crowley Deer might be one of the smaller red deer breeders in the country, but the boutique niche business is certainly making a name for itself in the industry. Todd Crowley puts his success down to being taught well by his father Joe Crowley, whom he took over the original family stud business from. Todd grew up attending deer sales and reading stag catalogues from a young age. He and his sister were given their own animal and got to choose what they did with it – their father encouraging them to follow the breeding process and reap the rewards. “That was a huge part of me getting into this.” Joe moved properties whilst Todd remains on the original small farm with his wife Frania and three children Finn, Louie and Stella. The pair share a friendly rivalry in the industry, but always support and collaborate with each other. Crowley Deer has introduced different sires over the years, but everything that has worked well points back to the genetics from his father’s original herd. “Ninety-nine percent of everything I breed goes back to my father’s lineage,” Todd said. Todd currently has the national record of $390,000 for a trophy sire stag he sold in December 2019, and then four years later another for $270,000, with two other notable sales of $155,000 and $128,000. “Before that only a few sires sold in the industry ON FARM » Crowley Deer were over that six-figure mark.” Todd’s mating list will be tweaked hundreds of times before being finalised, and there might be 20+ different sires used in any breeding season naturally and via artificial insemination. He has a keen eye on trends of different stags heritability and what they can pass on. “Dad taught me some very important aspects of the breeding fundamentals and I have made sure my choices are built on that.” “We look at each individual hind and then decide the sire stag to use. This creates a certain antler architecture which we hope the offspring will exhibit through their antler. But mother nature has a lot of input too.” “There is a premium for stags that look really attractive, which is why the $390,000 deer was so popular – “it had a beautiful and wide head,” he said. For trophies it was traditionally about the inches of antler, and the industry records continue to grow bigger every year. The world record was once 500 inches but that had since more than doubled, so Todd is now starting to concentrate more on the style factor in this latest breeding season and beyond, “for us that means going back to our roots. We’re looking at the aesthetics of the animals rather than the antler score.” Because the genetic pool in NZ is now so limited it made sense for Crowley Deer to reintroduce some of the older breeds to try and create different genetic crosses. ˫̳˫˫ ͇͍ ͎͎͎ ͈͌͊͐ ̫ ̫ Proud to partner with farmers like Crowley Deer to achieve great results. Whatawhata & Gordonton 07 210 4562 “There is a premium for stags that look really attractive,” says Todd Crowley.
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