About Coleraine Farm

Coleraine is a family farm first purchased by John’s parents in 1952, then consisting of 1065 hectares of undeveloped land carrying 950 ewes, 300 hoggets and according to John’s father some three million rabbits. 

When John took the farm over in 1982 it was carrying 5500 ewes, 1500 hoggets, 150 beef cows and 40 heifers. The deer were first introduced here in 1984 with the purchase of 53 weaner stags that were fattened and slaughtered. The following year 10 weaner hinds were purchased for $3,000 each! John ran the farm as a sheep and beef operation with a handful of deer until1991 when he leased the farm for five years. During this time he met and married Jacky.

We took over the farm again in 1996 and in 1997 it was decided to sell 670 hectares of hill to repay family debt as both of John’s parents had passed away in the mid 90’s. It was at this time the decision to go deer farming was made (due to John’s incompatibility with sheep!) and over the next six or seven years some 65km of deer fences were erected as well as a new set of yards in the old covered sheep yards in 2004. All of this work, except for 5km of fencing was completed by John.

During this time a large investment had also been made in pasture improvement with all pastures replaced since 1996 at least once as well as 47 hectares of native hill country development.

The property is currently running 1050 breeding hinds, 40 velveting stags and fattening all progeny compared to 90 hinds in 1996. In the 2007 winter we also wintered 450 dairy cows and 170 dairy heifers. We run a varying number of beef cattle over the summer depending on feed and beef prices.

It was during this development phase that a lot of planning went into waterway management and enhancement, which is something both John and Jacky are passionate about. The accompanying paper from AgResearch, which was written after a year and a half of monthly water sampling, was presented at the Grasslands conference in Dunedin in November 2006 shows that the water quality has been improved as it flows through our property.

Some funding was attained from the QE2 Trust who in turn was granted a covenant on a part of the Waimea stream and another on one of its tributaries. There is also another smaller one on the Waimea through Fish and Game. This was John’s second involvement with the trust with 20 hectares of native bush being covenanted in 1990 on the bock we sold.

In 2005 we were offered the position of the Southland deer focus farmers for the next three years. This is something we are pleased to have done allowing us to gain the skills and knowledge to sustainably push up our production levels. We have been supported throughout by an excellent facilitator and a supportive steering committee.

When we began this programme we were considered to be a little overstocked, but with some management changes we are able to carry 15% more stock and is our view as well as that of our Focus farm committee that we need still more. There is still another 24ha native block to develop.

The consensus among the committee backs our own feeling that this property is ideally suited to deer farming.

In the 2007 year we produced  400 tonnes of surplus silage on top of 800 tonnes left over from last year, while it is good to have a buffer we need to increase our cash flow from some of this extra feed produced.

The main management changes we have made are to our wintering system. We have built a self feeding silage pad for our hinds, which last year fed just under 1000 hinds for 100 days.

The main benefits of this system are:-

1. A lower feed cost versus making and feeding out balage
2. Less time feeding stock allowing more free time.
3. Keeping those animals off the paddocks over the winter thus building up a feed bank and reducing pasture damage and run off into the waterways.

The pad has been constructed so that it can be fed from both ends and this season the 40 hectare block the pad is in will be split in half allowing two mobs of around 450 hinds to spend the winter there.

Hinds in mid-winter.

Last winter the majority of our weaners were break fed on swedes until the first week in September with pleasing results.

Now that we have our stock numbers about where they need to be we are now looking at our genetics. Our focus is on venison production and we have chosen to use semen from Deer Improvement Ltd to AI 100 hinds per year to produce our own sire stags.

The 2006 calving produced our first AI bred fawns and on 30 January they weighed 45kg average with 10 of the stags weighing over 50kg. (We produced 55 fawns from 70 inseminations last year) Our hybrid fawns were only marginally better at 46kg.

In 1999 we set up the then empty farm cottage as a farm stay and annually over the summer months we have met people from all over the world. Some lasting friendships have been made through this venture.

With the philosophy that we are really only caretakers of the land it is important to us to leave the land in as good if not better condition than when we found it for the next generation. Soil management is a major driving factor in this. Healthy soil=healthy stock!

The main challenges in front of us are:-

1. To bring the gorse problem under control, this has got away, due to both time and financial constraints.
2. Develop the last hill block to increase our carrying capacity.
3. Subdivide the last of our large paddocks to provide more efficient pasture management and ease of stock movement.

Grain feeding weaners in the spring