With a short chilled season expected venison marketers are recommending to farmers to take the money being offered during the chilled season.
Currently, the market for frozen venison is subdued and the prospects post-Christmas are uncertain.
Deer that miss the chilled season cut-off at the end of October will be unable to reach Europe in time for the last game season sales.
While a portion will go to alternative markets, some venison will be frozen.
“Chilled prices during the game season are back on the last few seasons,” Alliance Group venison marketing manager Terry O’Connell said.
“However, demand for sea-freight chilled over the September-October period is steady on the back of limited processing volumes.
“Beyond that, we are dealing with the unknown.
“We’re encouraging farmers to take advantage of the certainty of pricing,” O’Connell said.
Silver Fern Farms (SFF) group sales manager Peter Robinson said in-market work with customers on the company’s market recovery plan strongly indicates the chilled season window will offer the best returns for products.
“Our advice to farmers is to target chilled season specifications,” he said.
“It will be challenging for our customers to find consumers for product falling outside of the chilled season and out of specification, and returns will consequently be significantly lower.”
Traditionally, hospitality offers the best prices for premium cuts, making chefs and food service the main targets of the industry’s marketing efforts.
With hospitality under a cloud because of covid-19, all marketers are making major efforts to build demand in other sales channels, particularly retail and online.
But these cannot be created overnight and have not replaced the reductions in the restaurant trade yet.
Meanwhile, a new Deer Industry New Zealand (DINZ) study shows deer farmers are growing their deer quicker, which means heavier carcase weights for young deer in spring.
Growth rates for stags (290 gm/day) and hinds (280 gm/day) in the 2018 and 2019 seasons were 4% higher than in the average for the previous four seasons, DINZ DeerPRO manager Solis Norton said.
This amounts to two kilograms of extra carcass weight for a deer killed on November 1.
The largest gains were seen in the Central North Island and North Canterbury, the smallest in South Canterbury and the southern part of the North Island.
The study shows just over one million deer under three years of age were killed in the past 10 chilled seasons, from August 1 to November 1.
The majority of these were under 18 months old, with 63% stags and 37% hinds.
A year-by-year analysis shows that chilled season growth rates were steadily higher in 2018 and 2019 than the average of all years before.
The data has been cross checked with NAIT data to only capture yearlings in the analysis.
Norton said this confirms the broad increasing trend over the past couple of seasons at an industry level.
“These are the positive results of farmers’ efforts to breed for and feed deer so they grow faster,” Norton.
“Many factors contribute to weights at the time of slaughter, including selecting animals for early or late production and seasonal weather conditions.
“On a national basis it is difficult to draw definitive conclusions as there are many influences in the timing of sending animals to market.
“But we can definitely see progress on individual farms that have a venison focus.”
