When an entrepreneur approached Canterbury deer farmers Graham Carr and Mark Faulks nearly eight years ago to ask them if they’d ever considered milking the aloof, highly strung animals the pair thought it was a good joke.
But it started them thinking and then thinking some more.
With a bit of determination and plenty of innovation they’ve developed a deer-milking venture called Deer Milking New Zealand with more than 300 hinds now happy to stand in a purpose-built, 12-a-side herringbone dairy, once-a-day (OAD) to be milked.
Rebecca Davidson is the company’s commercial manager.
She’s a specialist in marketing and commercial business and has worked in her field for more than 18 years.
She’s also Graham Carr’s stepdaughter and is every bit as passionate about the farming business as those working with the land and animals.
“It’s been amazing to see this whole new farming venture unfold and we’re very excited about where it’s heading,” she says.
Graham Carr is well known in the deer industry with Peel Forest Estate a renowned large-scale producer of world-class velvet, venison and trophy animals.
Mark Faulks joined Graham’s business in 2003 as a farm manager of Lincoln Hills and soon became an equity partner in the property.
It’s now a specialist breeding unit, home to about 2000 hinds with stags brought in from Peel Forest Estate during the roar.
In the mid-2000s they also converted a nearby deer finishing block to dairy with Mark managing the conversion process as well as the deer unit.
It meant learning new skills which, at that stage, he wouldn’t have dreamed would become useful to working with fleet-footed hinds.
But that’s exactly what happened when, in 2015 the thoughts about deer milking became a reality and they began converting a deer shed into a deer dairy.
Simon Wakefield came on board near the outset of the milking venture, initially as a tractor driver, but helped out in the dairy and quickly showed his talent for handling the animals.
He’s now head milker and manages the dairy deer.
Originally from Ireland, where he grew up on a 20.15ha, 23-cow dairy farm, his occupation surely raises eyebrows at the local pub back home.
The original dairy plant installed at the farm was for milking goats and had two cups per cluster.
They’ve stuck with that set up, despite deer having four teats, and milk the front two quarters first.
“They have small udders and you wouldn’t get four cups on at once anyway – but the cup system suits them because milking them is very different to a cow.”
Spending the time to get good let down and then ensuring each quarter is fully milked out has proven important to maintaining milk production and a healthy udder.
In eight years, they’ve only had one case of mastitis and somatic cell counts are extremely low at about 8000cells/ml, Simon says.
Early on it was apparent not every deer was suited to being milked.
They started out with a small group working with them and removing any hinds that didn’t have the right temperament for being handled.
A grumpy hind doesn’t just lash out with her hooves, she’ll bite too, so unlike cows you have to watch both ends of the animal.
The dairy is set up to be as user friendly to the deer as possible with dim lighting and plenty of padding in the bails set up in a herringbone fashion.
A gate secures each animal in their bail and holds them firmly in place along the length of their body on each side.
The gates are padded protecting the strong yet fragile animals.
They can’t see the milking pit, the clusters, machinery or the milkers because of a thick rubber wall.
A round hole is cut in the rubber wall allowing the milker to pass the cups through to the udder.
The wall protects the milker but also the deer keeping noise down and activity out of sight.
Once they had a group of animals that could be milked the focus turned to yield.
“We had a massive variation – some hinds would give 200ml and some could produce 1.5litres in a milking,” Simon says.
They’ve found it’s often the smaller animals that produce the best yields and thanks to the years of recording carried out on Peel Forest Estate they are starting to identify lines of animals best suited for milking.
That could result in a specialist Red Deer line of milking deer and yet another string in the bow to Peel Forest Estate’s already impressive genetics.
The herd now averages 1l/hind/day over a three-month lactation – from February 1 to May 1.
Hinds fawn in mid to late November and milking begins about six weeks after fawning.
Offspring from many of the original hinds have now entered the herd and milking is a calm, gentle experience.
Like cows, the hinds have a hierarchy and their favourite sides of the dairy to come into.
“You can’t be in a rush, things have to be done at their pace, quietly,” Simon says.
During lactation hinds are fed about 20% more than commercial breeding hinds and need high quality pasture.
Some pasture silage is fed during the shoulders of the season but no supplements are fed in the dairy because the animals are too alert to focus on feeding while there.
Deer milk is more concentrated than cows’ milk with a 25% milksolids (MS) content.
Half of that is fat and while that makes for an amazing, creamy product it does mean a few modifications had to be made to the milking plant and extra effort goes into plant washdown, Simon says.
Concentrated goodness
Discovering the nutritional composition of the milk has led to some exciting finds and is opening the way for world first product developments, Rebecca says.
Research with Callaghan Innovation has revealed just what concentrated goodness deer milk is with a big range of omega fatty acids and other bioactive lipids including phospholipids and gangliosides believed to play a role in brain development and immune response.
It has a higher percentage of protein than sheep and goats’ milk with two to three times more protein than cows’ milk.
Levels of lactoferrin are up to nine times greater than cows’ milk throughout the season. Rebecca says researchers found high levels of other vitamins and nutrients too. Initially the deer milk was used for niche cheese making because of its high fat content and a lot of effort went into developing a risk management plan (RMP) necessary before animal products can be sold to the public.
It was processed and sold by Talbot Forest Cheese as Gouda and Havarti for some time but Rebecca says other products were also explored such as yoghurt, ice-cream, capsules, tablets, skincare and a fermented milk drink known as kefir.
“We laugh sometimes because we’d thought milking the deer would be the hard part but processing it has taken a lot of ingenuity and system development.
“With quite a bit of effort we’ve been able to get the milk to powder, via freeze drying or spray drying.
“The high fat content makes drying it difficult using standard milk drying processes.
“We’ve decided that we’re focusing our efforts now on developing nutraceutical products so we can make best use of the nutrients and bioactives in it.
“We’ve done a lot of field studies with people and animals and we’ve found it has success in supporting immune systems and with anti- inflammatory issues as well as great results in the musculoskeletal systems of both animals and humans, due to the high protein nature of the milk.”
Last year they were approached by a Korean company interested in using the milk for pets.
“We’ve trademarked the Nutrideer brand and we’ve developed a bespoke freeze-dried powder product that’s used as a sprinkle to go on pet food.”
Rebecca says the wider Asian market is very familiar with deer products with nearly all parts of the deer used in traditional Chinese medicine for centuries.
They are now developing a range of high-end pet supplements that will have the deer milk powder as the hero ingredient but may also contain other New Zealand natural ingredients including the possibility of deer velvet. But it’s not just pets – they’re also looking to develop a range of supplements for people too.
That’s where they’re heading next but the longer-term potential seems boundless given the rich array of components in, what not that long ago would have seemed an unlikely source of milk.
