Over the past few days, several seemingly unrelated posts led up to this one. First, we learned about how deer can quickly reproduce and overrun a national park. Then we learned about how reindeer are raised as livestock in Lapland. Then I also read an article about how beef, pork, and chicken are the only meats found in most American supermarkets. Why do we not have deer ranches? We do! See, venison is lean, tasty, and growing in popularity, so the cervid livestock industry is small, but booming.
LedgEnd Farm in Middlebury, Vermont is home to approximately 400 fallow deer. Hank Dimuzio, farmer and founder of LedgEnd Farm, is not the typical farmer, choosing to farm in addition to his career as an emergency room physician. Dimuzio and his wife, Rhonda, decided to farm deer because he needed a type of farming that would be compatible with his lifestyle. “Deer are, in essence, a very low care animal,” says Dimuzio.
Read about the growing business of deer farming at Modern Farmer. -via Digg