Best of British

The venison farmer who is living his dream in the Scottish Highlands

Farming venison in the Highlands

JOE MALLINSON HAS worked on farms since he was a boy and made his career in agriculture, but it wasn’t until 2011 that his life’s dream was realised – raising red deer in the Scottish Highlands. ‘When the opportunity came about to buy land here and farm them in my own right, it was too good a chance to miss,’ he says.

The 200 acres he manages with his wife Elaine lie just outside the town of Moffat in Dumfriesshire and sit between 600 and 700ft above sea level, surrounded by mountains. But the land itself is fairly flat – a crucial condition, Mallinson explains, for grazing. ‘Growing grass is the most fundamental feature of farming deer and it’s my challenge to keep the best quality in front of them.’

Across the acreage, which was completely bare when he took it over, save for a couple of sheds, he has introduced a strategic grazing programme, reseeding and rejuvenating the land to produce rich forage for his herd.

The Mallinsons started out with 100 breeding hinds in 2012, but two years later they began to supply Waitrose & Partners with its venison and their numbers have risen to 160. Joe hopes that eventually 200 will roam the farm.

The summer months are spent calving and then making silage for the deer. In the winter, when the calves come inside, they are fed with a compound feed in the sheds – the hinds teach their young how to eat it – and then progress on to the special silage (the higher the protein levels, the better). ‘They seem to enjoy it. The downside is they eat it all very quickly!’

Once weaned and released back out into the fields, the calves are fed grass only. ‘This assists the distinct venison taste,’ Mallinson says, ‘which is nowhere near as greasy as lamb or beef.’

After the so-called Beast from the East at the start of the year left two inches of snow on every building, the summer was ‘an absolute joy’ for the Mallinsons. Months of warm, dry weather made it easy to produce the silage crops, ‘and we even managed to make some hay, which is unusual’.

The couple rarely eat any other meat; venison – lean and high in omega-3 – is a staple at home, from loin medallions on summer barbecues, to diced meat in casseroles and minced for bolognese sauce through the winter. And they love the animals too. ‘Red deer are absolutely enchanting,’ says Mallinson. ‘It might sound a little gushy, but I consider myself privileged to work with them.’ Waitrose 1 British venison is available from £4.99 (waitrose.com)