Jul 8, 2021
A stalwart of the deer industry, John Tacon will retire from DINZ as the Quality Assurance Manager later this month after more than 30 years of involvement and commitment. It has been a pleasure to be associated and guided by John on all aspects of animal welfare and transport. John is a practical thinker and leader that people want to follow. John was the go-to guy for the implementation of the recent Regulated Control Scheme for velvet and I know he took more than one call from me and was always a helping hand. I hope that John and Judy now have time to do all the things that they have had to put on hold in the past.
The NZDFA Next Generation Programme 4/5 August, in Queenstown is now open for registration. If you or someone you know would be interested, simply go to the Deer Industry New Zealand website deernz.org/2021-next-generation-programme. We will be visiting a total of four deer farms each with a different focus on how to farm in today’s ever-changing environment.
Last month the NZDFA Executive Committee came together for a meeting in Wellington where we were joined by Kiri Rupert as an observer who sat in and contributed throughout the whole day. It was a great initiative and one that will be repeated in the future, so if you would like to be considered please register an expression of interest with the NZDFA (direct to Tony Pearse at tony.pearse@deernz or 021 719 038).
There is more exciting news with a new triple combination drench developed by Nexan now registered soon to be released. It has taken a lot of dedicated participants across the deer industry to get this across the line and I am sure it will be a real winner in helping us keep on top of animal health into the future. Further details of the release and best practice use were discussed in Palmerston North at the North Island Deer Tech Expo and Deer Farmers’ Workshop (held on the 30 June and 1 July 2021 See DINZ website for details deernz.org/north-island-deer-tech-expo-and-deer-farmers'-workshop)
What a wonderful week we have had with warm gentle rains of 75mm (yearly total 576mm or 23 inches) and overnight temperatures around 12 degrees. We have grass growth in the middle of winter, which has made for a very easy lambing with our first week of lambing averaging 200 % (2 sets of twins) and we now have a grand total of 20 lambs. That reminds me I better book in some space to send the excess of last year’s lambs off to the works. We have been eating venison and beef now for the past 6 months and only had our first taste of lamb in a long time the other night. After months of protest from my wonderful wife, I finally relented and killed a lamb for us to eat. It is something we take for granted at times to be eating some of the best meat in the world with a low carbon footprint, from our paddock to our plate, you can’t get much better than that.
Stay warm this Winter.
- Justin Stevens, Marlborough, NZDFA Executive Committee
