On a velvet fast track

PETER WATSON

 

Phyllis Kinzett has long given up trying to get her husband to slow down.

As a stock agent for more than 30 years and a top breeder of velveting stags, Alf Kinzett is constantly on the go.

If the affable 62-year-old with the energy of a much younger man is not on the phone talking to clients from his Murchison home, he is either at or on the way to their farms to draft lambs or sort out their cattle.

He regularly drives 70,000 kilometres a year to see farmers from Fox Glacier to Bainham and even Canterbury. It used to be more, before cellphones made conducting business easier.

There are few places in Nelson and Buller he hasn't been to, but the Grey Valley is a favourite "because it's beautiful if you are into farming and buying stock".

His network of contacts is vast, the result of working for his own and other meat companies over the years, selling everything from sheep and cattle to deer and goats.

Farmers, such as David Marshall of Teapot Valley, who have done a lot of business with him, say he is a consummate salesman – "he could sell icecreams to eskimos" – and a excellent judge of stock who can source them when others can't.

Just back from three days of deer sales down south, Mr Kinzett squeezes in a chat before shooting off to do some drafting.

It's a full-on job – an addiction, as his "very tolerant" wife terms it – that he still enjoys, although it eats into the weekends and the phone rarely stops ringing. It is banned when they go on holiday.

"I do pace myself more now and I've been lucky with my health."

For the last couple of years, he has worked on commission for CRT after the national company bought Kinzett Livestock, the business he and his wife set up and ran for 10 years.

Although it did well against bigger opposition, neither miss the stress of running their own company, with its big overheads and some slow-paying clients. He hopes to do another three years with CRT before calling it quits.

The red deer, however, are a different matter, as he and son Bryce plan to expand their stag herd.

Breeding good stags for their velvet is a passion which he started to do seriously about 12 years ago.

Before that, the Kinzetts ran a romney stud, selling up to 100 rams a year. But the extra work it involved, especially during lambing time, years of poor returns and an industry trend to crossbred sheep, convinced them there was more money for less effort in deer velvet.

As a keen hunter, he had always liked deer, so he started off breeding from feral hinds caught locally and mating them with well-bred English stags.

But the gains were a long time coming, with just 20 per cent of their two-year stags cutting 1.5kg of velvet and the rest culled.

It wasn't until they bought some quality English-bred Warnham hinds and paid "some big money" for some top stags that they began to get big gains. Now more than 80 per cent of their two-year-olds are cutting 3kg.

"The three-year-olds we kept this year averaged just under 6kg. They are going to fly. The better ones are going to be 10kg stags when they peak at 6 or 7 years old."

Much of their early success was due to a stag bought for $35,000 from a Canterbury stud. The appropriately named Murchison was a national velvet champion as a 4-year-old, sparking a demand for his semen, which fetched up to $1000 a straw at the height of the deer boom in the early 2000s. Now gone, his genes live on, with one of those purchased straws producing Walton, arguably the top New Zealand stag at present.

However, what really put the Kinzetts' Echo Park red-deer business on the map was another stag they bought in 2003. They paid $15,000 for a half share of Buller, who has since sired some of the country's best stags.

Bought because Mr Kinzett liked the look of his bloodlines, Buller has gone on to produce massive heads of velvet year after year, the biggest of which was 14.6kg. Last year, as a sprightly 11-year-old, he cut 13.8kg and mated 60 hinds, with all but one producing a fawn.

Buller was in line to win a national title in 2007, before his head of velvet was controversially rejected by the judges because of a small mark, a much talked-about decision that rankled, but led to a lot of sales of his semen.

"We've got a lot of straws in the bank."

They have turned down a tempting offer of more than $45,000 for one of his sons – dubbed Johnnie Walker because "he is off the top shelf" – who produced a record head of 8.9kg as a 3-year-old.

After a break, Mr Kinzett was back at the 2011 national championships, where his antler heads again performed strongly.

Not surprisingly, his top stags are sought after by a growing number of buyers, including some studs.

"We never got into the business to sell sire stags because we are not a stud, we are a straight commercial operation, but we've found we are breeding animals better than we can buy and people know that."

The key, he says, is using animals with good genetics and matching them carefully at mating, then feeding the stags well after the rut when they have lost a lot of weight.

He has always favoured stags with big, wide and clean beams (the main branch of the antlers) over those "which look like a Christmas tree". He also breeds for temperament.

"I've just been to the sales. They have all chased the trophy head and have lost beam, and once you have lost that, you haven't got good velvet, because that's where your weight comes from."

After keeping the best stags to breed from, most of the rest are sold and the few stragglers are sent to the works.

"We have found a really good market for second and third-cut 2-year-old velvet stags and normally sell them for about $1000 each."

But few will be sold this year, because the plan is to increase the velvet herd from 300 to 400 in the next few years. To accommodate the extras on their three blocks – 12 hectares at their home on the outskirts of Murchison, 60ha on the main road just north of the town and 200ha of hill country in the Owen Valley – the hind herd of 450 will slowly be reduced.

With good hinds fetching $600 and no interest in getting involved in venison production, Mr Kinzett said it made economic sense to concentrate on stags.

At $100 a kg for velvet, his stags averaging 6.5kg to 7kg and stocked at six or seven to the hectare, the net returns were excellent for the amount of work involved, he said.

"Nothing else is going to match it. It is better than dairying because of the lower cost structure."

After seeing velvet slump to $50 a kg fours years ago, which resulted in some farmers exiting the business, he is confident the velvet price will hold up now that China has joined Korea as a major buyer.

Although deer fencing and sheds complete with hydraulic crushes to contain stags while their antlers were cut cost a lot to set up – they have spent $500,000 – it was nowhere as expensive as a dairying milking shed and effluent system.

Once established, deer cost little to run, with maize to feed out over winter and local anaesthetic to give the stags during the removal of their velvet the major costs. Mr Kinzett says he avoids using any other drug, because it is cleaner and safer for the animal not to.

Above all, farming deer fits in far better with his stock agent job, he says. Unlike with stud sheep, where there was always work to do, deer require little input for much of the year.

His hinds fawn at more than 90 per cent without intervention, while he and his son, who does much of the day-to-day stock handling, often work either very early in the morning or at night during the velveting season from October through to Christmas.

They aren't the only ones kept busy. Until recently, Mrs Kinzett ran a bed and breakfast at two units next to their house for 15 years, doing all the work herself. She still rears up to 60 calves from August to October.

A keen tramper, she also played hockey up until a few years ago, driving once a week to Richmond for games.

With her husband often on the road or phone, "I've had to entertain myself".

"I don't henpeck him, because it's a waste of time."

Mr Kinzett says he's been lucky to have such an understanding and supportive wife, although any thoughts of a quiet retirement seems some way off.

- © Fairfax NZ News