Monday, July 29, 2002, pg. 1-2
By Bill Henry

It's a Buyer's Market in the Elk Industry　

Weekend event one of six regional gatherings

There couldn’t be a better time to invest in elk, breeders at a regional antler competition near Wiarton said Saturday.

Prices for velvet antler, the industry’s primary product, and for breeding stock are at one-third or less of historic values, but the industry is rebounding from a slump caused after chronic wasting disease appeared in animals in Western Canada.

More than 8,000 elk were slaughtered in Saskatchewan to curb the disease, which has never occurred east of there. But many countries have also stopped importing the medicinal antlers from Ontario breeders, fearing the wasting disease could pass to humans, although it never has, breeders said.

Some states have also closed their borders to Canadian elk as a precaution.

The velvet antlers which drive the industry are harvested from males at 75 days of growth. The antlers are sliced and frozen and eventually powdered and sold in capsules to relieve arthritis and other aches and pains.

Raymond Bumstead, a Grey-Bruce industry pioneer who began breeding Elk in Keppel Township 16 years ago, has sold velvet antler for as much as $125 a pound. Lately he’s been getting $25 or $30 a pound and prices have been as low as $20 a pound.

Korea alone consumes 600 tonnes of antler annually, much of it now North American product processed and sold on the black market as Russian antler, which is still allowed into the country, Bumstead said.

The industry setback in North America from chronic wasting disease – an over- reaction to incomplete media coverage, Bumstead said – has created opportunities.

Lower prices mean a developing market now for the low-fat meat from the large deer-like animals, many of which sold at auction Saturday morning at Eric Robinson’s Oxenden area farm for one-third what he paid for similar stock a year ago.

Robinson, president of the Ontario Elk Breeders Association, with 52 members and about 3,500 animals in all, is relatively new to the business. He’s been building his herd of 120 animals since he fenced his farm and got into the business just 18 months ago.

With breeders from across eastern Canada and the northeastern United States, the weekend event at his Regal Point Elk Farm was one of six regional gatherings in North America. Events included workshops, public tours, the antler competition and a sale of both live elk and straws of semen from the country’s best bulls.

The top animal at the sale, a yearling male with an unusually large growth of velvet, sold to a New York breeder for $16,000. The top semen sample went for $825.

Robinson bought one animal paying about one-third what he would have a year ago.

"There’s certainly no better time to improve the genetics of your herd than now, while the animals are so cheap," he said.

Barbara Kay and David Harper are new in the business. In February, they paid $48,000 for 17 pregnant female elk. The cows and calves are still boarded at several Guelph area farms.

The couple has since invested another $50,000 to fence and prepare their 97-acre Stoney Field Elk Farm for the herd to arrive in about a month.

The couple had no plans to buy more animals, but couldn’t resist two young females Saturday – one for $850 and another for $500.

"The prices were very, very low," said Harper, who works for a small Toronto biotechnical company producing cancer drugs. He was raised on a farm in England but has no agricultural experience in this country. Kay has only ever had a cat, but they wanted an agricultural operation with animals.

Research ruled out sheep, cattle, emus and ostriches. They settled on the relatively low-maintenance elk, partly because the price is now right to get into the breeding business and also because of the animal’s attributes. They stay outside, eat less in the winter than the summer, unlike cattle. Calving is usually trouble-free and "they’re just very pleasant animals to be around," Harper said.

They were also attracted to both the potential profit and the medicinal aspects of the elk antler product, which they’ve been using themselves to cure aches and pains for several months.

Only the males produce antlers, but they do so every year.

"You don’t even have to kill them," said Bumstead.

An average bull will produce between 20 and 25 pounds, or as much as $2,500 annually at the usual price, for an animal that cost about $350 to raise, Robinson said.

He said there are four ways elk breeders make money – antlers, breeding stock, the new and growing market for elk meat and sales of fully mature males to private hunting lodges.

Well-heeled sportsmen visiting self-contained lodges will pay many thousands of dollars for the thrill of hunting a bull elk with a full rack.

Robinson said that’s not entirely unlike culling old "baloney bulls" – bulls from cattle herds. The elk producer can do the same, getting $500 for the meat, or he can ship his animal off to a hunting reserve for $5,000 and up.

"They both end up in the same freezer," he said.