Fields & Furrows

Chronicling the Business of Agriculture, April 2002, pg. C22

Local Farmer Building Elk Empire

By Jim Algie - Sun Times Staff,
Photo by Willy Waterton The Sun Times

Elk farms are different from traditional livestock enterprises that depend on sales of meat from farm-raised animals.

With most elk farmers, the sale of meat has been something of an afterthought. Demand for elk antler velvet is what really drives the business.

An important element in the preparation of oriental medicines, velvet has been known to sell at prices as high as $120 per pound. Selective breeding for velvet production in recent years has produced a huge increase in weight and volume of the antlers on leading male elk.

The appearance of Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD) in domestic elk herds in Saskatchewan and Alberta, however, has made a particularly rough ride for Canadian farmers in recent years. Korea has banned imports of Canadian velvet and breeding stock prices have plunged. Velvet sells now for as little as $20 a pound, 16 per cent of the precious commodity’s historic highs. Ontario Elk Breeders’ Association president Eric Robinson hopes continued disease eradication efforts and new emphasis among growers on raising animals for meat can help stop the elk market slide. As many as 8,000 animals have been destroyed in a Canadian Food Inspection Agency effort aimed at eradicating the Saskatchewan outbreak which poses a threat as well to the 42,000-animal herd of domestic elk next door in Alberta.

"If there was ever a time to get involved in this industry, now is the time," Robinson said on a recent tour of his own 92-animal herd north of Owen Sound. "Breeding stock prices are the lowest they’ve been in five or six years," he said.

A successful inventor and Grey County based manufacturer of internationally distributed playground equipment, Robinson is relatively new to elk, but not farming. He grew up on a family dairy farm.

Eric and his wife Dale began the manufacturing success story of their Shallow Lake-based SPI Industries Inc. With innovations in super-insulated livestock watering devices. They use SPI watering bowls in the winter paddocks at their Regal Point Elk Farm near Oxenden. Heavy-duty blue plastic feed troughs are fabricated from 24-inch plastic columns used in SPI’s popular playground sets.

Robinson’s return to agriculture follows the recent sale of U.S. and New Zealand companies in the SPI group which still includes affiliates in the U.K., Middle East, Mexico and Brazil. He has cut back on an international travel schedule that had him away from home as much as two weeks a month. Robinson is looking to spend more time on the 40 hectares of pasture and bush which stretches out behind a rock solid 100-year-old framed barn where he and Dale have also begun construction of a new home facing sunsets over the former Keppel Township.

They picked elk mainly because of the animals’ instinct for self-reliance and relatively low maintenance requirements. Depressed markets for breeding stock also presented something of an opportunity for the Robinsons to buy in at relatively low cost, although prices since then have dropped further. Even so, top end, breeding stock has performed with spectacular profitability in the past when bulls with records of abundant velvet have fetched as much as $100,000. Market recovery should find Robinsons’ year-old, Regal Point operation well positioned for profit.

They’re also part of a group of Grey and Bruce elk breeders being organized to boost prospects for Ontario elk by holding this year’s Northeastern Regional Antler Competition in July, using state-of-the art facilities at Regal Point. The show committee also includes Raymond and Elizabeth Bumstead whose Beautiful Keppel Farm was among the earliest elk breeding operations in this part of Ontario, and Dennis and Deborah Schmidt, who operate Big Creek Elk Farm near Tiverton.

The group expects more than 200 breeders and buyers for the North American Elk Association-sanctioned event July 26 and 27. Participants are to come from as far west as Michigan and east to the Maritimes. Robinson sees the show and a coincidental auction sale of live animals as a firm step on the path to recovery for Ontario herds which have been free of CWD throughout the western crisis. It’s a way to point out that Ontario elk farmers remain in business despite the depressing effect of illness elsewhere.

The show judges antler production, which forms such an important element of the business. As president of the Ontario association, however, Robinson also emphasizes the importance of serious attention to other potential markets for elk and its byproducts.

There are parallels between the current crisis and on 10 years ago after the discovery of tuberculosis in domestic elk herds. TB-eradication measures worked and recovery in prices for breeding stock and velvet soared.

"This challenge might take a little longer to get through," Robinson sail of CWD. "But the strength of the whole industry is there the same way it was," he maintained.

"The strength of the industry is genetics," he said, referring to selective breeding for the weight and volume of antler production. "But not every animal is breeding stock and some time in the industry you’ve got to cull your herd," he said.

"If you buy animals to sell animals; that’s not the basics for any industry," Robinson said. "The basics of the industry is velvet, but it’s meat and its hard horn sales as well," he said.

"We still think there’s always going to be room for top end genetics and good value in that," Robinson said. "But we’ll also be putting animals into the meat side of things as well," he said. And that means that the 40-member Ontario Elk Breeders Association will be putting funds into the training of butchers and chefs to make effective use of the high protein, low fat, low cholesterol meat which comes from mainly grass-fed elk.

"On average if we could get something like $3.50 (per pound) for carcass weight, that’s $1,200 to $1,400 to be generating from that animal and that’s a profitable source of revenue," Robinson said. "We’re really got to get focused on that and get that more into the system," he said.