Deer focus farms - are they working?

Abstract

This study aimed to understand how farmers responded to field days and newsletters delivered in a Focus Farm project for deer farmers in Otago and Southland. In 2006, 30 deer farmers from Otago and Southland were interviewed on their environmental practices. Farmers were re-interviewed after 2 years to assess their involvement in the Focus Farm project and the value of that project to them. This project had a significant impact on both environmental and productivity improvements on the farms (averaging 2.2 and 1.1 changes per farm, respectively), both of farmers who attended the field days and those who only received newsletters (averaging total changes of 4.6 and 2.0 per farm, respectively). Keywords: deer farming, environmental, focus farms, field days, newsletters, productivity