Say I was hankering for venison but didn’t feel like going through the rigamarole (required in Illinois) of buying a gun, getting a FOID, getting a hunting license, waiting until deer season, finding land to hunt on, finding a deer to shoot, shooting it, getting it to the butcher somehow, paying the butcher for his services, getting the meat home, and storing it.
I’ve checked the local butcher shops and not a one of them sells any kind of game meat. Those that do are in larger cities, but I’m confused as to where they get the meat. Do hunters sell it to them? Or do they buy from farms?
Yes, there are farmed deer. New Zealand, where deer are an introduced species, has the greatest number by a wide margin. This article has a table at the bottom showing number of farmed deer by country, as of 1998. Hardly a major industry, but it does exist:
Upstate NY has at least a few Deer farms. There was one next to my Sister’s place in Boonville, NY.
I have heard of Quail farms, but I have never seen them. We have an Emu farm just done the road from where I live. I will mention them under the etc.
There’s such a farm in our county, located about 1 mile north of Millerstown. The homeowner put up a tall fence around 10 acres of land and stocked it with deer, antelope, etc. I’m not even sure how the animals survive… it looks like a big, nasty mud pit to me. And the animals don’t look healthy.
I’ve personally visited a roe deer farm and a “wild” boar farm. The fur industry operates mink farms, though I’ve never seen one myself. I’m sure PETA will be pleased to show you lots of videos, though.
Alligators are farmed for food and hide in Louisiana. Buffalo (American Bison) and Beefalo are farmed. Ostriches are farmed for me also. There is a bunch of them. There is a least one supermarket in Boston that has an exotic meat section with everything from rattlesnake (I suppose those are farmed) to antelope.
I remember when I was stationed in Georgia that some of the local butchers there would have some venison there available for sale (might actually have been on consignment). What would happen is a local hunter would bring in his deer to be cut up and sold because they had too much meat or perhaps didn’t like it.
If you wanted some, perhaps you could call some of the local butcher shops. Or you could always buy some online .
Interestingly, those big open areas are very important on a quail farm.
The reason is that farm-raised quail will only fly in hops of about the length of their coop. If you raise a quail with little or no flying room, they will only fly a short distance before lighting. If, however, you want to raise quail (as most people do) in order to sell to hunting plantations, you need to have a large open pen in order to raise a bird that will fly more than 10 or 15 feet when it flushes out of the brush.
Sorry for that hijack, but I thought it might be interesting.
I raise quail and wild turkeys, along with some other things. If I had a bit more land I would try raising a couple of elk. Anything sold as meat has to be processed at a USDA licensed facility.
Here is a picture of me with one of my domestic Eastern Wild Turkeys about a month ago
Are Game Animals (Deer, Quail, Dove, etc.) Farmed?
Tennessee and I assume most states regulate the ‘farming’ of game animals.
Ask questions first and get the necessary permits if available for your favorite game!
They are surprisingly friendly and smart. I’m not even holding on to that Tom, he’s just perched on my wrist. Not all of them are as friendly, but the majority are pretty calm around me. Strangers get them worked up though.
Right. In fact, our local meat processor won’t have game and domestic meat in process at the same time. He sets aside a month at the end of hunting season where he cleans and sanitizes the whole plant, processes only wild game, cleans and sanitizes again, and then switches back to cattle, sheep, and pigs.
My property used to be a deer farm, one of the reasons I bought it was because of the good fencing, which was needed to keep the deer enclosed.
Deer and Ostrich farming were heavily promoted in Australia for a while as “get rich” schemes. Exotic meat was supposed to be the next big thing, but while there is still a small market for it (possum/crocodile/kangaroo/emu & etc), many people who invested heavily in the schemes lost their money.
