Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, March 19, 1992 TAG: 9203190149
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B-3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: PALMYRA LENGTH: Medium
Ditore is raising a herd of 183 deer and their fawns to fill a rising demand for venison on restaurant tables and grocery shelves.
Her farm is the second Virginia operation to turn to deer for breeding stock and slaughter. The first, about an hour north in Sperryville, has a herd of 600 and soon will be the site of the state's first commercial deer slaughterhouse and processing plant.
Together, the deer farms are only the beginning of what some predict is a coming trend in Virginia agriculture.
In January, the Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries set the stage for expansion by adopting regulations for raising deer as livestock. A trade group for commercial deer farmers predicts that 15 more deer farms will spring up in the state during the next couple of years.
Already the idea has taken hold elsewhere in America. About 300 to 400 deer farms nationwide are commercially producing venison.
"We gross per acre three times what I can with my cattle," said Rolf Graage, owner of the Sperryville farm. "Right now, there is very little production in this country. My feeling is the market is unlimited."
He opened the door to deer farming in Virginia in 1988, when he got permission from state officials to bring fallow deer into Virginia. About the size of a goat, fallow deer have chocolate-colored eyes and coats that range from white to spotted to solid brown. The bucks have broad, flat antlers with rounded tines.
Graage said he hopes to start a marketing cooperative at his slaughterhouse, which will offer the same on-site federal inspection of venison required for traditional meats. Like other farmers, he also sells venison to specialty food mail-order companies.
For farmers, deer production poses benefits and problems. Start-up costs are relatively high. A herd of 20 does and two bucks can cost about $17,000, said Ditore, who also raises fallow deer. She has enclosed 34 acres of pasture with special wire fencing to keep the deer in and predators out.
Her barn is a maze of plywood runs and chutes that lead to smaller pens or to a metal cradle that holds an animal so it can be examined. But the deer are easy to raise and breed and cheap to feed. During much of the year they survive on grazing alone.
They also need less space than cattle, and their meat sells for more. A deer carcass sells for about $5 a pound. Beef sells for about $1.
But most slaughterhouses won't handle wild game or do so only on a limited basis. Consequently, deer farmers shoot their livestock in the field, dress the carcasses and take them to a processing plant for butchering.
And deer typically are slaughtered only in winter. That makes deer mostly a seasonal meat and makes regular markets harder to develop.
Americans ate an estimated 1.6 million pounds of venison last year, said Raleigh Buckmaster of Lansing, Iowa, president of the North American Deer Farmers Association.
Much of that was raised on farms in New Zealand, which exported nearly 1.27 million pounds of the meat into this country in 1990, the last year for which statistics were available.
by CNB