Deer Handling and Transportation
Format of work:
Journal Article
Event presented at / Journal Name:
Animal Welfare
Speaker / Contact Author's Name:
Poppy Statham
Speaker / Contact Author's E-mail Address:
poppy.statham@bristol.ac.uk
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Research aim:
This study aimed to provide an updated picture of deer transport and handling in the UK by gathering insights from deer farmers and data from abattoirs.
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Background:
The deer farming industry in the UK is relatively small compared to other livestock sectors and has seen a lot of growth over the past couple of decades. Transportation and handling is stressful for most farms animals, but perhaps additionally so for deer who have been domesticated more recently and are often described as flighty, nervous animals. There is little research on deer transport and handling and the majority of it is over 15 years old.
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Approach:
To do this we carried out a survey of deer farmers to find out about the journeys their deer undertook, management techniques and set ups on farm to facilitate transport, this was completed by 16 farmers. We also collected data from abattoirs regarding group sizes, journey length and duration and the amount of bruising on carcasses that was scored by the abattoir.
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Key finding:
Data collected from abattoirs showed that red deer in the UK were transported for up to 10 hours and 450km for slaughter. In our survey of deer farmers they expressed concerns about the lack of stop-off locations and deer-specific vehicles, meaning that vehicles are likely to be designed for cattle and it may not be possible for deer to be given breaks. Our data also showed that smaller group sizes were associated with more bruising, though it wasn't possible to ascertain the causes of this as we used data collected after the event. Most farms remove hard antlers prior to transport, but others transported their deer with antlers, each presents different challenges for deer welfare. It would be beneficial to carry out controlled studies to investigate deer management and transport further and make recommendations to support farmers choices and improve welfare of farmed deer.
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Industry or policy relevance:
Deer may undertake very long journeys to slaughter and farmers are concerned that this is not in deer-specific vehicles and that there are insufficient stop-off areas. Some deer are transported in hard antler, others have antlers removed before the journey. There currently is no research to understand the impact these aspects have on welfare, this would be essential to make recommendations.
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Route for practical application:
Further research is needed before recommendations can be made. It might then be possible to make recommendations regarding journey durations, breaks, antler removal and group sizes for transport.
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Confidence in findings and next steps towards realising impact:
Our transport data included all the journeys to two abattoirs in one year, this represented 4,922 deer across 133 journeys from 61 farms, so the data represents a good percentage of those transported to slaughter in the UK. The data was gathered after the event however, meaning we were reliant on records kept by abattoir staff and it is possible that measures such as bruising could have differed between the two abattoirs which could have affected the results. Our survey covered 16 farmers who between them owned about 19% of the UK farmed deer population, however some of them were recruited using a client list of one abattoir so the sample may not be representative of farms across the UK.
Funders:
With thanks to the Humane Slaughter Association for the Student Scholarship which allowed us to carry out this work.
Links to Open Access Publications or DOI:
Citation:
Pearce SJ, Foster AP, Knowles TG and Statham P (2023). A survey of handling and transportation of UK farmed deer. Animal Welfare, 32, e30, 1–8
