Is this the right place?

BlackGold,



With all due respect, I'll bet you a dollar you want be able to harvest a deer that you raised from birth for venison. Just saying.........

Make it 2$ lol

If you have 10 acre's you will have plenty of ground to raise more deer than you will want for pet's or freezer meat.

If you are in Texes finding 8 foot fence should be easy, I have seen it at several of the farm store's there.

If I were raising deer for venison, I would go with axis and fallow.

I agree 100% with Jason..best two out there as far as taste

BlackGold - I've never eaten axis or fallow(had heard before that it was good though), but I know sika is out of this world good...puts whitetail to shame, and I love my whitetail...eat it all year long. I'm getting out of the whitetail business, and have thought very seriously of attaining some sikas for the table.



Concerning fence, I've used 'Solid Lock' and I've used 'Tight Lock'...both are high tinsel. The Solid Lock was more expensive, but in my opinion and for my purposes, it was worth the extra money. The Solid Lock had smaller squares on the bottom which help to prevent small newborns from escaping, and the 'locks' on the squares held tighter than on the ''Tight Lock'' fence. Solid Lock also seemed to be a better quality ''high tinsel''...seemed stiffer.

Sika deer = tasty tasty tender meat...I promise!!

The best to you BlackGold!

G'day BackGold

I've chital (axis) & both European & Persian fallow.A six foot fence depending on your laws will be more than enough to keep them.

These species rarely twin.The chital will have four calves every three years though, as the hinds cycle again 3 weeks after birth.Like most asiatics there is no well defined rut.

The fallow only rut once a year,but are more domesticated & easier to work with than chital.

The chital have a broader dietry range & are much less fussy than fallow about the quality of feed.

Chital stags & fallow bucks dont grow thier best heads till about seven so producing big boys takes some investment.

I never run these species together,but I often run the chital with sambar without problems.Chital will hybridise with all the various rusa & hog deer.

I sometimes run up to 100 chital stags in hard antler together with the hinds with few problems (never in enclosures smaller than 40 acres though & bigger is better).This would cause problems with fallow.If the fallow bucks are left in antler,then they(the bachelour herd) are out of sight & smell of the does.Only one master buck & a yearling are left with the does & I keep him in antler.If I have two "equal" bucks with the does they would kill each other.Many Chital stags can usually be left together with hinds in large enclosures as their courtship is very different.



The chital are a pain to work but they look after themselves better than the fallow.I can generally choose when I want to work the chital wereas the fallow seem to take up a lot more time.

Having said this chital would not be the best species for a "first deer",whereas fallow would be good to start with.



For eating I find hog deer the best,then chital,rusa & fallow at the moment.

The various species of reds next,including sika & elk & sambar as the toughest.



Beware! Once you have the deer disease the only relief is more deer.



Cheers Sharkey

Blackgold, on upcoming episodes of our TV show we are going to show starting a small deer farm from start to finish. We will show it from square one until we have deer there. It might be of interest to you. We air on the Pursuit channel, Directv 608 and Dish 240 on Thursday nights at 7 PM and again on Mondays at 10 AM. Also, we are on Dish 232 Rural TV on Saturdays 11:30 AM, 4:30 PM, 11 PM, and Sundays at 12:30 PM and 4:30 PM. The show is Wild Rivers Whitetails - hope you get a chance to watch.

When will the series about starting a farm start?

We are filming now so probably not for a few weeks yet. We hope to do a segment each week or so during our regular show to keep following what is happening on the new farm. Will sort of depend on how fast things move. As we all know, things don't usually move as quickly as we'd like.



It should be informative and interesting. Other upcoming shows will be about TB testing and sawing antlers for one. We also hope to do a show about semen processing. If folks have ideas on things they'd like to see shoot us an email - we may or may not be able to work it in.

We currently have season one available which is the first 13 weeks which is wrapping up right now. When the second 13 weeks are done we will probably sell that season as well. Do you get the Pursuit channel on Directv, channel 608, or Dish on 240? We are on those channels. Go to our website at www.wildriverswhitetails.com and click on TV show and you will get all the times and channels and also how to order a season of DVDs.

BlackGold, If you want to be able to slaughter them, in Texas you will have to go with axis or fallow. You can't slaughter white-tailed deer in Texas as they belong to the state. As far as axis vs. fallow deer go, in my opinion fallow deer are much easier to work with.



Russ

BlackGold, we have fallow deer. We are still learning but have found them to be quite easy to manage, except when the bucks are in rut. We have safety protocol (2 people at all times when entering the pen) and we enter the pen in a calm and easy manner.



Russ how can the state of Texas own a farmer's livestock?

In Texas they are not the farmers livestock. The law says that all white-tailed deer inside the borders of Texas belong to the people of Texas. Fallow and Axis, since they are non native, are livestock. We are working on getting the law changed but I'm not sure the majority of the people support that right now.

So a hunter with a tag could shoot a deer in a pen and its legal then? That just doesn't sound right!