Maine couple raises deer for venison

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BLANCHARD — Noses were pressed to the fence, mouths opened for a handout of grain. It was a rare treat after munching on grass through the summer.

The noses belonged to fallow deer being raised for venison on the Breakneck Ridge Farm in Blanchard. The animals grunted and snorted as they crowded around to grab morsels extended to them by Stephen Hobart, their owner.

While the adults hastily gobbled up the grain, small spotted fawns cautiously kept their distance.

Among the fawns were seven whose mothers were artificially inseminated last fall with semen extracted from rare Mesopotamian deer. The expensive process was designed to produce a hybrid deer that is a cross between the fallow and the Mesopotamian.

The result is a deer that is much larger and healthier, and one that commands a higher market price for its venison because its hind quarters and saddles are bigger, according to Hobart.

They also have a little shorter gestation period.

Transported to Maine last fall in liquid nitrogen, the semen was injected into 14 does by three New Zealand doctors from the Ivermay Agricultural Center in southern New Zealand.

Hobart and his wife, Diana, were the first Maine couple to start raising deer for venison more than five years ago.

When Hobart learned that the center in New Zealand offered the services to supplement its government funding, he contacted officials there and set the process in motion.

Several other deer farmers across the country also took advantage of the opportunity, he said.

It cost $1,000 for the procedure plus the expenses of the team and $150 for each straw of semen injected into the deer. Each straw contained 25 million sperm.

While Hobart had hoped that all 14 of the impregnated deer would conceive, he was happy with the end result.

Normally, the success rate of the insemination procedure is about 70 percent, slightly less than the percentage rate of the natural mating process, according to Dr. Jeff Asher of New Zealand, who performed the procedure.

In the United States, the average is 50 percent, although it has been as high as 80 percent and as low as 20 percent, said Hobart.

Because the Mesopotamian deer is an endangered species, with only a few still in the wild in Iran and Germany, the United States subsequently has stopped importation of its semen, Hobart said.

He hopes that a half-Mesopotamian buck that he purchased for $4,000 will bring about more hybrids.

Nothing special was done during the birthing process, which occurred June 13-23 in the fields, according to Hobart. He said he walked the fields each night to check on the newborns.

As president of the New England Deer Farms Association and the New England Venison Cooperative, Hobart constantly seeks ways to market the meat.

Getting a purveyor in southern Maine hasn’t been easy, he said. Members of the cooperative have pooled their efforts because none of them has enough deer to sell in one place, he said.

The meat of the fallow deer has a fine texture and is very mild, in contrast to the more gamy flavor of meat from a white-tailed deer, he said. The best cut sells for about $16 a pound and the hindquarters sell for about $10 a pound on the market, according to Hobart.

There are about 30 deer farms in the state.

“It’s building a little bit every year, but there’s no leaps and bounds,” Hobart said.

Hobart said fallow deer are about half the size of white-tailed deer and have antlers that are palmed, with wide flat areas, like a moose’s antlers. The antlers of white-tailed deer are tined or rounded.

Whatever color fallow deer are when they are born is the color they’ll be for life. White-tailed deer are born with a spotted coat, but shed it and grow a brownish coat.

Genetically, white-tailed deer cannot breed with the fallow deer, he said.

The price of breeding stock for fallow deer has dropped dramatically. Three years ago, a doe couldn’t be purchased for $1,000, but that price has dropped to about $400, he said.

When Hobart began deer farming, he installed a 7-foot fence around the area where the deer winter and a slightly lower fence to protect them during the summer months.

He was told by many that white-tailed bucks would jump the fence and destroy the fallow bucks to breed with the does. That hasn’t been the case, he said.

The only problem Hobart has encountered with his herd is intestinal worms. Samples of feces are tested from the deer and those found to have worms are treated, Hobart said.

The former cattle farmer said, “If you really like farming this is the best-paying proposition.”