Rotation on Breeding stock

You can always do artificial insemination (AI) to diversify your herd no matter what state you are in. Sell your breeder to a hunting preserve and then do AI for a year or two until you have a new breeder buck of your own.

If you are wanting them for a hobby then I would say your expectations are realistic. In my opinion if you are looking to sell offspring so you don't become overpopulated you will need to do more than what you are planning on doing.

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I may sell offspring or send adults to the butcher shop for venison. My goal would be to start with basic genetics and try to get them up to a point where I would have the option to sell animals for their moderate genetics. Just see where things take me I guess. I would like to start up with the room to grow for a few years so I wouldn't have to worry about being overpopulated for a bit. 




Costs the same to feed a great deer as it does just a brown deer. You want to stay small is fine but i would stay small with great genitics that may grow you that buck that you sell for the price of that new haybine and baler and rake and chopper and posts and barbwire and and and....lol


Well you get the point. Let the farm animals pay for the farm. Unless money is not an issue. Sucks to have to work to have a hobby. Awesome to have a hobby work!

If money is not an issue then having deer will not either. Nobody in the deer business is going to buy a deer of lesser genitics so you will be limited to who will buy. Unless you sell meat. It would be easy to inbreed your animals if you just let them have their way with each other with no control. Now if you start talking line breeding then you will have hundreds of options!

Line breeding is when it works, inbreeding is when it doesn't lol. Start with middle ground animals, don't buy into hype but into production. In the end hunters don't ask for a pedigree they ask for a look. Ryan

You have already gotten some good advice. I will just echo it for the most part to help pound home the point.


 


These days you can buy some very good does at a low cost. I would strongly recommend going that direction. This whole idea of buying brown deer to start out with and "learn with" is bogus. Your pens, feeders, water units, gates, and other assorted items will be a bigger investment than buying 2 to 4 does that should be capable of producing 200" at age 2 sons if bred correctly.


 


Line breeding is the best way to increase predictability in the offspring. However many think line breeding is breeding two related animals. Nope it goes further than that. Study up on that for a while to develop a good understanding on the topic. You have plenty of time for that yet. For now concentrate on pen layout and design. Plan for expansion down the road. Have good solid pastures planted. Start out with tame deer. Meaning does that you can pet or at worst they come up within 10 to 15 feet of you. Fence crashers create way too many headaches. Buy your first does bred and don't worry about buying a buck to start with.


 


Just my quickie thoughts for whatever it is worth. I don't know much about this stuff yet myself. Just over 20 years doing this and I learn something new all the time.

Good advice Roger. It cost the same to feed a brown deer as it does one with great genetic's.

Honestly that is hard to say. It depends what state you are in and how far your willing to travel to get them. Unless the seller agrees to deliver for a fee. I will just tell you based on my personal sales outlook here. I am located in central WI. I have a TB and Bruce Accr and Cert herd with a state of WI certified double fenced herd. That allows me to sell to areas not everyone can and thus selling is a bit easier.

I have sold bred does in the past year for as little as $1500. I have other does that I would want as high as $4000 for them bred IF they were even offered for sale. I would say on average a quality bred doe will go for about $2500 right now.

These are prices based on REAL WORLD SALES and not the hyped up ego breeding market. The true breeding market collapsed back in 2011-2012. You will grow some fantastic bucks with high quality animals like I am talking about. Sons close to and likely over 200" at age 2. There is no need to spend more money.

Based on your goals to begin with I would not advise buying a breeder buck. Unless it was a real deal of an opportunity. Like buy one at the same money as shooter prices. That will of course then depend on what he scores. Just keep in mind a true breeder is a buck who has proven his worth by putting big sons on the ground.

Good luck!

Roger

Right now you can practically "steal" does with good genetics so DO NOT start with just brown deer. No one will buy your does and you will become overpopulated. I have a small herd (10-15) but I AI with the best genetics I can afford simply to be able to sell my doe. Then, you may grow a nice buck you can live breed with later on. You'll enjoy watching the bucks grow from great genetics much more anyway and when you hold your first set of sheds in your hand, it will all be worth it!

AI is really not brain surgery. Yes you need to do things a certain way, but most folks can do it if they learn how correctly. That said, again depending on where your farm is getting someone to do your deer may not be hard at all. If your way out of the way it could be more difficult. By these days there are a lot of folks doing AI. They may not all be great at it, but they can still do it.

Your asking good questions and open to taking advice from folks on here so keep doing it. You have much to learn grasshopper. LOL

If I had to put a number to it I would say about 1.8 fawns per doe. If you do AI that number can increase to 2 or more. Using the meds involved with AI tends to increase the fawns born. At least that has been my experience.

When you are ready I can help you with bred does. We have a few good AI techs up here that are pretty good too! Lots of good semen floating around real reasonable. Breeder bucks are still a bit pricey by comparison but we cycle 3 or 4 out of here every year. We really like helping people improve their genetics . Our interest is greedy as we like to buy the stockers for our preserve.

Our genetics are very typical , heavy and wide with 2 year olds SCI grossing as high as 288 . We don't give them names and don't flash a lot of pics around. We have been doing this since 1979 and have seen a lot of deer people come and go. We now try and grow what our hunters want because that's what pays the bills.