Hartdale Park Red Deer Farm Genetics

Hartdale Park has based its herd on Warnham and Woburn genetics for superior antler production. All stud stock are Warnham, Woburn or crosses of these lines. Our commercial herd has this same base but we are now using Wapiti bulls as terminal sires to increase body size for venison production. Having started from scratch our velvet herd is relatively young with nearly all stags under 5 years old.

Our original stud animals were sourced from Ballalona Deer Farms and Rainbow Deer Farm. Sires such as Phillip, Saxon, Arthur (imported from England), Shar, Brian, Duncan, Charles Rupert, Australian Velvet Champion Linford as well as New Zealand’s Windermere Stud’s Harvey and James have all contributed significantly to our genetic base.

The value of good genetics is obvious when our spikers regularly grow multi-pointed heads with our best spiker to date, White 59, growing a 14 point head.

One of our stags, White 13, came third in the DIAA National Velvet Competition – 2YO section, and more of our young stags are showing great potential. We have been using the best of our two year olds over our maiden hinds each year to ensure the best of our genetics are being passed on as quickly as possible.
 
Whilst we have used several sire stags our main stag has been Archie. He is a grandson of Harvey, who was put over a James daughter, whilst on the dam side he traces back to Duncan. Truly excellent genetics and he is passing on his thick beamed antlers and good temperament to his sons.

At Hartdale Park we cull heavily on performance and temperament. Any animal, regardless of breeding, that displays a poor temperament is culled from the herd – no exceptions. We also cull out the bottom 20% of our velvet stags each year, ensuring a constant improvement in overall herd production and profitability.