Easy prey. How open-air hunting works in Russia

Breeding wild boars is a profitable business at home

Breeding wild boars at home can be a profitable endeavor and bring a decent income. The wild boar, called the “boar,” is the ancestor of the domestic pig, which has long been a common farm animal. This wild animal arouses keen interest not only among hunters. Increasingly, it is attracting the attention of farmers. After all, the animal does not require special care, quickly gains weight, is capable of highly productive reproduction, and the meat is recognized as a delicacy.

The business of raising wild boars is quite profitable.

• 1 How to distinguish a wild boar from a domestic one
• 2 Breeding principles
• 3 Business profitability
• 4 Closer to wild nature

Aviaries are convenient

“Hunting grounds cannot be called a profitable business, so farms often go bankrupt,” says the owner of the Chesnava land, Sergei Vasilchenko.

But not everyone goes bankrupt: many of the properties are backed by influential people, among whom were Russian Railways President Vladimir Yakunin and his partners, the children of ex-governor of the Leningrad region Valery Serdyukov, banker Petr Aven and NLMK owner Vladimir Lisin.

Petr Aven is a keen hunter; he invested in breeding wild boars and bears long before the law on open-air cages was adopted - in 2012. Now Alfa Bank, according to SPARK, owns the Zalesye hunting farm and 17,000 hectares of land in the Torzhok district of the Tver region.

“Hunting provides an opportunity to take a break from subordination. On a hunt it’s like in a bathhouse: there are no generals. They can hit you on the neck for wrong behavior or a missed animal, they can tell you everything - both about politics and about your own work,” Vladimir Yakunin wrote in his blog. For 13 years, the businessman owned shares in the “Real Hunt” farm and the “Golden Duck” fish farm (they rent forest plots in the Priozersky district of the Leningrad region). However, according to SPARK, in March 2022, his share passed to another co-owner - Vladimir Vasiliev.

Director Nikita Mikhalkov also loves to shoot. “I have a leased hunting property on the Volga, near Nizhny Novgorod, of 37,000 hectares. I have 140,000 hectares on lease in the north, near Vologda,” he said in an interview with Izvestia. The lands are registered in the name of public organizations of hunters - Nizhny Novgorod "Temino" and Vologda "Temino-Severnoye" - the co-owners of which are Mikhalkov himself and employees of the Trite studio.

How to distinguish a wild boar from a domestic one

The boar has a relatively short body, but long legs compared to the domestic pig. The boar is also distinguished by a longer and narrower head with sharp erect ears. Fangs protrude from the mouth up and down and grow without ceasing.

The male stands out for his large size and large fangs.

Elastic, thick black-brown bristles form a kind of mane on the back. The snout, lower body, hooves and tail are black. The eyes are small and also black. The weight of an adult wild boar varies from 100 to 200 kg, and the body length is from one and a half to two meters with a height at the withers of about a meter.

Animals easily smell food, even if it is under a layer of soil of 10 - 15 cm. And then they dig it out with the help of their snout and fangs. Even frozen ground does not stop wild pigs in winter.

Features of behavior of wild boars

The wild boar is an omnivorous mammal, porcine, artiodactyl, and is also called the boar.

Many livestock breeders do not want to engage in this activity because they think that these animals have a ferocious and aggressive character. This is wrong.

Wild boars are the direct ancestors of domestic pigs; they are distinguished by their flexible character, calm disposition, and high intelligence.

Their body is short, dense and sinewy. The animals' legs are strong, long, and rounded. The head is powerful, elongated, the ears are large and long. Boars have powerful, well-developed fangs that are very sharp. The canines of females are less developed than those of males. The color of the bristles in animals is dark with a brown tint; on the back it is somewhat longer and grows in the form of a mane. The body size of wild boars sometimes reaches 180 cm, up to a meter in height, with a weight of up to 200 kg.

For your information!

In nature, wild boars live in packs of up to 30 individuals, along with cubs and young hogs. They feed on insects, worms, roots, berries and mushrooms.

A young boar at the age of three months can be bought from farmers for about $100. It is important not to subject the boar to severe stress during transportation, so it is better to transport them by car with a trailer, in cages covered with dense material on top.

To obtain meat, wild boars are raised until they are one year old.

Breeding principles

For wild pigs it is necessary to build a large spacious enclosure. It is usually made of strong metal mesh, the thickness of which should be at least 6 mm. It is pulled over concrete or metal pillars dug into the ground. It is very important that the sections of the enclosure fit tightly to the ground so that the animals are not tempted to dig under and run away. On the territory of the pen you need to build a shelter and equip a small pond that they will willingly use.

To breed wild boars, you need a spacious enclosure so that the animals feel free.

Boar breeding

Breeding wild boars at home is not an easy task, but it allows you to obtain meat, a rare delicacy that has a lot of useful and nutritional properties. They reproduce well in captivity, are not capricious, are omnivorous, and quickly gain weight. In addition, wild boars have remarkable immunity, so there is no need to fear that most of the livestock will die.

In order to breed wild boars at home, it is important to know what to feed them. Plant and animal foods are suitable for this

For young individuals, porridges made from mixtures of grain crops, fresh and boiled root vegetables are ideal. And to enrich the menu with proteins, animals should be given minced meat, milk, rodents, and chickens. The average weight of food per boar per day is at least 6 kg.

It’s worth pampering wild pigs with nuts and acorns every day: they simply adore them!

It is important to properly prepare your diet so that it is balanced and includes all the vitamins and elements necessary for health.

The wild boar is omnivorous, so it adapts well to changing natural conditions. But if there is a need to breed wild boars, responsibility for its nutrition rests with humans.

Business profitability

Breeding wild boars at home is an excellent business. You can sell young wild boars to hunting farms. Or raise them to produce expensive and rare meat that cannot be bought in a regular store.

The profitability of raising wild boars is quite high due to the ability of the animal to independently obtain food for itself in a fenced area. Depending on the time of year, it is possible to add vitamins, minerals and biological supplements to the diet. For feeding, you can use cereals, vegetables, leftovers from potatoes and beets, as well as corn and wheat, both boiled and raw. It was this unpretentiousness, along with rapid weight gain, that initially prompted hunting farms to breed wild boars in captivity.

Overfeeding wild boars is not recommended, as reproductive function is reduced.

The cost of feeding and maintaining animals is low, and the cost of meat is four times higher than the price of regular pork.

The main source of income is the opportunity to sell wild boar for meat. After all, it is almost impossible to find this delicacy on store shelves, and the demand among gourmets is enormous. Boars are sold upon reaching one year of age. This approach makes it possible to achieve the greatest profitability, since up to a year the boar rapidly gains weight to approximately 120 kg, and then the rate decreases significantly, and further maintenance does not make economic sense.

The cost of 1 kg of wild boar meat can be 4 times higher than the cost of regular pork.

It is profitable to breed wild boars for sale at an earlier age, three months. Their price is approximately 6,000 rubles. A pig, whose gestation period is about two months, is capable of producing 10 - 15 pigs at a time. The need for young individuals increasingly arises along with the development of this business in our area. One or more males must be retained until they reach 20 months of age. It is during this period that the reproductive system and reproductive function of the boar are finally formed. The female is capable of procreation at 10 months. It is recommended to mate wild boars from November to January. Moreover, one male is able to fertilize up to three females, losing up to 20% of his body weight during mating.

During the mating period, males compete with each other for the right to procreate and can be aggressive.

February

Reservations for hooligans

Most enclosures in hunting farms are built to house wild boar (Sus scrofa). This animal, by its way of life, is firmly connected with the forest, and in the conditions of the central part of Russia, primarily with the forest with spruce undergrowth. In it he finds refuge in the harshest winter, and in early spring the pigs take refuge for farrowing. At the same time, such a forest cannot provide food for wild boars. And any other forest cannot, except for a fruit-bearing oak grove, and then only at a certain time of the year. As soon as any of us looks around the land, we will see that from spring to autumn, until the ground is frozen, wild boars feed in clearings near rotten stumps, tear up anthills, on the edges, near ravines, near villages, in clearings, along field roads, in abandoned gardens, in overgrown fields. Wherever it is possible to find thickets of plants with rhizomes, worms, insects. But under a dense forest canopy in the shade and dampness this does not happen in abundance. Remember, how often have you seen wild boars digging in the forest? Like all ungulates, to combat ectoparasites and annoying flying blood-sucking animals, the wild boar looks for an opportunity to roll and lie in the mud. Especially in the heat.

This species of wild ungulates is the most controversial object of breeding and keeping in enclosures (the same applies to crosses between wild boar and domestic pigs), and here’s why. It is well known that the wild boar has striking distinctive abilities: rapid reproduction, rapid and catastrophic destruction of the natural landscape and vegetation. In addition, the boar constantly tests the integrity of the enclosure fence, but will not jump over it. This beast is easy to feed - it is practically omnivorous, but moreover, it is carnivorous, and this means that it will destroy all living things that are unable to fly away (escape) from it or actively resist it.

Distinctive features of a wild boar enclosure

In any such enclosure you will see feeding areas covered in dirt and droppings, with the smell of a pigsty, a forest without undergrowth, and instead of it in the summer there are thickets of nettles, undermined and exposed tree roots, sooner or later doomed to die. These “aesthetic” impressions, “in harmony” with nature, are complemented by rutted tractor or UAZ-lawn tracks from the gate to the site and then a metal grain chest under the tower or next to it (the wooden one will be broken by wild boars very soon), at the above-described feeding area and feeding trough - wooden troughs or lying around halves of KAMAZ tires.

As a rule, the shot boar falls straight into the stinking mud on the site. The scale and scope of the above vary depending on the area of ​​the enclosure and the number of wild boars inhabiting it. It is extremely rare that you will be offered to hunt a wild boar in an enclosure with a decent trophy. The enclosure for shooting wild boar is complemented by the presence of one or more clearings with half-towers for shooters. Shooting in such an enclosure is intense and, as a rule, it is a wild boar under the age of one year (since it is easier to buy or catch).

Everything said and shown represents a “national” feature of the operation of an enclosure for keeping and shooting wild boars (a separate issue is the joint keeping of other species of ungulates with wild boars). Unfortunately, this state of affairs, in my opinion, is the norm or an uncontested reality both for managers and owners of hunting farms, and for the majority of hunters visiting enclosures.

However, the situation is not fatal, and if there is a desire and need, it is possible to change it by following a number of simple rules. As a rule, there is only one problem, but a serious one - the need to change the attitude of farm personnel to their work. Stereotypes of traditional business practices are very firmly entrenched. However, there are successful examples of farms that have changed the situation in Russian reality. These simple rules arise from the above-mentioned needs and characteristics of the behavior and lifestyle of the wild boar. Of course, like most living organisms, not excluding humans, animals are capable of living in the most unfavorable conditions if they are deprived of choice and the opportunity to escape from them. We all know that people can endure for quite a long time the most extreme conditions that are generally considered incompatible with life. But the fact that an animal survives in an enclosure and even makes attempts to reproduce does not mean at all that its productivity corresponds to its natural one and is satisfactory from the point of view of simple arithmetic of the costs and income of a hunting farm.

Rule 1. The ratio between forest and field in the enclosure should be 50/50 or slightly deviate in favor of the field. The forest should have an undergrowth of spruce. Fields should not be open over an area of ​​more than 3 hectares. An enclosure located entirely on agricultural land, owned or long-term leased and actively overgrown, is preferable, because it provides the owner with greater freedom of action to form vegetation in it. A mosaic agricultural landscape, interspersed with strips of trees and shrubs, will provide the opportunity to organize both driven hunts for a team of hunters and individual hunts from the approach.

Rule 2. It is necessary to carefully monitor the number of animals in the enclosure. The optimal number is determined by observations of damage to the soil and vegetation. Another option is also possible: in Europe, in 25 large radial enclosures for conducting driven hunts with the shooting of dozens of wild boars per day, a system of adjacent storage enclosures is created. Captured animals are kept in them, releasing them into a large enclosure shortly before shooting. Therefore, the hunter sees an intact, beautiful forest around him.

Rule 3. If a wild boar rams and actively digs under the fence, it means that there is something missing in the enclosure, and most likely there is not enough food. The mesh used to fence the enclosure can be of different types and with different mesh sizes, but its strength in combination with the size of the mesh should not allow the boar’s snout to greatly deform it. A boar that is not puzzled by leaving the enclosure is kept on farms for years behind a chain-link with a mesh size of 100x100 mm made of wire with a diameter of 2.5 and 3 mm. Wire with a diameter of 2.5 mm quickly corrodes near the soil, and the mesh made from it has to be replaced more often. In the fencing of a boar enclosure, the mesh must be buried 30–50 cm into the ground. But the boar provides an opportunity to save on the width of the mesh. The height of the fence above ground level may not exceed 160–200 cm. Even a seriously disturbed boar is not puzzled by high jumps. He will prefer to ram the fence with his snout.

Rule 4. Feed the animal on feeding grounds, possibly with almost any grain sold in your region, but it must be fed all year round. It is advisable to sow all field plots in the enclosure with an oat-legume mixture, but at different times from early May to mid-June.

Rule 5. It is better to install towers on the edge of forests and fields. You need to feed the boars grain every day, pouring heaps of grain slightly away from the place of yesterday's heaps. In this way, the soil and grass cover on the field is preserved and at the same time it is possible to change the shot distance individually for each hunter and his weapon. A field (2-4 hectares) provides such an opportunity, which cannot be done in the forest (there are obstacles for the hunter’s eye - trees, undergrowth). In addition, the veterinary and sanitary condition of such a vast (10,000–20,000 sq. m.) feeding area for animals, used more than once and in parts, is always better than constantly localized on 100 square meters with troughs and rubber tires, since all the troubles are born in the constant mud around them.

Rule 6. It is extremely short-sighted to keep any other species of ungulates for breeding in the same enclosure with a wild boar. The wild boar is carnivorous and, whenever possible, having detected by the smell of blood a calved female deer, fallow deer or mouflon and scared her off, he will eat the newborn and the afterbirth. In none of the mentioned species of ungulates, at dusk and at night (the time when the wild boar is active), the female will protect the newborn from an attacking predator.

Closer to the wild

An alternative source of income from raising wild boars is organizing walks and excursions to breeding sites for children and schoolchildren. At the same time, you can make money not only on tickets, but also by selling food to children to feed the animals. This is very interesting and safe, since the wild boar, despite its ferocious appearance and impressive size, is very tolerant of humans and has a calm and flexible disposition. This is one of the rare ways to observe the behavior of wild boars so closely: unfortunately, they are becoming scarce in the wild. Attending such events can broaden the horizons of young people and awaken an interest in wildlife.

An alternative business option is excursions to wild boar habitats.

The business of breeding wild boars at home is still a relatively new phenomenon in agriculture. However, it is gaining popularity, given the relatively little competition and ease of keeping these animals. The initial costs associated with the construction of enclosures are more than recouped with the first piglets, which confirms the profitability. The enterprise will help revive interest in agriculture and attract new investments.

Profitable exotics: ostriches and wild boars

Breeding exotic animal breeds is becoming a very profitable business for individual entrepreneurs. In this case, two options are possible: breeding animals for hunting (organization of a hunting farm) and breeding animals for meat and other products (farming). This exotic niche meets all the business requirements of individual entrepreneurs: a high level of profitability, quick payback, fairly low initial costs for organizing a business, low competition.

Wild boars: a pig, but not that one!

Breeding wild boars has recently become more and more popular.
There are several reasons for this: compared to domesticated pigs, wild pigs are more precocious, they breed more actively, their offspring are higher, their feed is much cheaper, and their resistance to various diseases is higher. In addition, special buildings are not required for breeding wild pigs; they are bred in open enclosures. The only negative is that a large enclosure area is required, since keeping wild animals in captivity is prohibited by current legislation. But even the convenience of breeding wild pigs would hardly encourage entrepreneurs to engage in them, especially since the method of breeding domesticated pigs has long been worked out. The main reason: high demand for wild boar meat (restaurants, cafes, luxury grocery stores), as well as the revived fashion for hunting provokes a demand for wild boars for hunting farms. It should also be taken into account that wild boars, like their domestic counterparts, provide skin for leather production, which also brings profit.

There are several features in breeding wild boars that should be taken into account when getting down to business. Firstly, the territory that should be allocated for enclosures. It will not be possible to breed wild boars on a regular plot of land: there is not enough space. But now it is quite easy to cheaply rent waste land, which can perfectly accommodate a pig herd.

Another nuance is food. Wild pigs are much less picky about food than their domestic counterparts, and they are cheaper to feed. However, it should be remembered that the meat of wild pigs is valued precisely because of their specific taste, which is very different from the taste of “domestic” pork. Therefore, it is recommended to follow the diet that wild pigs follow in the wild - in this case, the taste of the meat will meet the highest requirements that apply to delicacies. Instead of feed or table scraps, which domestic pigs happily feed on, their wild relatives are offered corn, carrots, peas, and so on. To feed the “wild” herd, feeders are organized on the territory of the enclosure, and in addition, the pigs eat pasture until winter - this improves their taste.

If wild boars are bred for hunting, then it is necessary to provide them with some training: in captivity, with constant guaranteed food, animals lose some of their natural aggressiveness, which negatively affects them as objects for hunting. Some hunting farms are even developing special training methods to increase the attractiveness of wild boar hunting (although wild boars are bred for hunting in enclosures and are not real wild animals), they are even trained to jump over obstacles.

When raising animals for meat, you need to remember about sanitary requirements - usually wild pigs are not vaccinated, since they are resistant to diseases to which domestic pigs are susceptible, but in the absence of appropriate vaccinations and documents, it is almost impossible to sell meat (at least if we are talking about wholesale sale, and not about one carcass “from hand to hand”). Therefore, before you start breeding animals, you should clarify the sanitary requirements that you will have to follow.

When planning to breed wild boars, check the possible competition especially carefully: if when breeding for meat, competition may not be too important (meat can be easily taken to another city), then when breeding for hunting, competition can become a stumbling block.

Ostriches: waste-free exotic

Raising ostriches is now not only becoming fashionable - this business is considered one of the most highly profitable, second only to pharmaceuticals.
But to engage in pharmaceuticals requires education, licenses, and significant financial investments. An ostrich farm requires much less. Of course, you can’t do without basic knowledge in any type of farming, not just an ostrich farm, but the main thing is hard work, perseverance and the desire to get results. Ostriches do not require a special diploma; they only need good enclosures, balanced food and the attention of the farmer.

The ostrich is a fairly unpretentious bird, and best of all, it adapts perfectly to almost any climatic conditions. African ostriches cope well with the winters of Central Russia, and there are no problems with preparing food for them, because they eat almost the same as ordinary chickens (cereals, fresh herbs, and so on). The average life age of an ostrich is about seventy years, and the ostrich lays eggs for about forty to forty-five years! Well, if we talk exclusively about meat, then one ostrich is about one and a half centners of meat!

Raising ostriches is practically waste-free production. Ostriches provide meat, which is highly valued, leather, which is highly sought after in tanneries, fat used to make various cosmetics, eggs, and the famous ostrich feathers. Even the shells of ostrich eggs have their buyers - such products are usually purchased by artists and carvers. There is also the option of farm tourism - the ostrich farm can be shown to those who wish, it is quite exotic. One ostrich family (usually one male and two females), maintained properly (proper nutrition, lack of stress, and so on), can bring its owner up to two million rubles a year.

A farmer from Zhitomir built a business raising wild boars

Not far from Zhitomir, in the village of Turovets, Zhitomir region, there is a farm where real boars are raised.
Farmer Vladimir Tikhonchuk has a very interesting line of business: he breeds wild boars. His farm is the only one of its kind in the Zhytomyr region. This is not a pigsty at all, but several fenced-off areas of young self-sowing forest.

The wild boars live there in their usual conditions: they wander through the thicket, rummage in the ground in search of tasty treats, and swim in the swamps. The difference between their existence and the completely wild one is that people feed them with fragrant anchovy and corn.

– Why did you choose such a very strange business for yourself? - I ask the farmer.

“Really strange,” he agrees. - But I'm a hunter. But the fact is that now almost all hunting grounds are in private hands. There is practically nowhere to go with a gun and a dog. And in 2008, it seems, a law was passed allowing farmers to keep wild animals in enclosures. Thus, I have the right to breed him, train hunting dogs on him, and finally shoot him. Young huskies are brought to me so that they can smell the animal. At the same time, the owner of the dog immediately sees: if the dog does not show interest in the wild boar, then keeping it as a hunting dog and training it is pointless.

Five years ago, Vladimir Tikhonchuk bought two breeders and six young females, and today the farmer has about 50 head of wild boars, including suckling piglets.

– What is your business, that is, how do you turn these cute pigs into money? Do you sell boar meat to expensive restaurants?

– I am receiving offers from restaurateurs; next year, if farrowing is good, and if no one “helps” with shooting my wild boars, I will try to start making money from this. And now... Unless we train huskies, but it’s not a lot of money, and I sell the surplus corn grown for feed. But this, of course, does not cover the losses. So far I’m just investing: growing food, building enclosures. I also want to get badgers and build a pheasant farm. Pheasant hunting in a corn field is a true hunter's paradise.

– What is the beauty of wild boar meat?

- In his wildness. It is tougher than that of a domestic pig, and you need to know how to cook it. It must be soaked in wine or beer and stewed for a long time with onions, garlic, and spices. I also had to try the meat of badger, beaver, and roe deer, but wild boar meat is the most delicious and beaver is also okay.

– How do you get along with the local population?

- Fine. But with poachers - not so much. Three sows and two gilts have already been killed. The police came and worked. After this, the raids stopped. Bye.

– Why are the hunting grounds of Ukraine incredibly poor compared to neighboring Poland or, for example, Slovakia?

“It’s like this with us: he saw a roe deer and knocks it down, he doesn’t look to see if it’s a female, a male, or even a baby.” As a result, there is no one to reproduce. This is not hunting, but barbarism. At the other extreme, many forests were turned over to hunting grounds. Their owners protect and increase the number of animals, but a simple hunter has nowhere to go. For them, people like me will breed animals, and at the same time preserve the livestock and restore its diversity.

– What animals are there in these forests?

- There are roe deer, and wild boars, and badgers, and moose are coming. But many, many moose are shot here - experienced hunters know their migration routes.

– Are there animals that compete with hunters and just people for food and territory?

- Foxes. There are a lot of them divorced. They destroy young animals. And the beavers got it too. They build their dams all around. My enclosures are already flooding. You dismantle their dam, and by morning it is back in place, even stronger than before. If under the USSR they had been able to build so quickly and efficiently, we would now have the most prosperous country in the world. Wolves only run in by chance...

As it turned out, Vladimir Tikhonchuk spends his income not only on wild boars. He also has a veteran football club “AMIKO”, which won silver in the Ukrainian Championship this past year. In general, apparently, Vladimir Mikhailovich is not one of those who languishes over gold. He quickly finds a use for every hryvnia he earns. This doesn’t make him richer, but he manages to make his life full, meaningful and necessary.

Basics of aviary breeding

Making a decision on the enclosure keeping of ungulates (deer, fallow deer, mouflons) requires a serious strategic calculation for the owner or director of the farm. An enclosure (we will use this term to refer to areas fenced off for keeping animals) requires large financial investments: the construction of a fence and special infrastructure, the creation of pastures and fodder fields, the purchase of agricultural equipment and, finally, the initial number of animals. The initial costs amount to millions of rubles, and the enclosure will bring tangible results only after a few years.

Breeding goals.

The size and required infrastructure of the enclosure depends on the goals.

1. Hunting, including trophy hunting, in an enclosure.

2. Release into own lands.

3. Sale of live animals.

4. Raising animals for commercial purposes (producing meat and antlers).

5. A complex of all these goals or their combination.

Depending on the purposes of breeding, places where animals are kept can be technologically divided into “enclosures” proper and more complex complexes - “farms of wild ungulates”.

Aviary

In the simplest and most common version of an enclosure (both in Europe and here), the same territory is used for breeding and shooting animals. These types of enclosures are created by fencing the perimeter of an acceptable area of ​​land and are the simplest to set up. The animals are provided with minimal care, but managing such a semi-wild herd to achieve a specific result is quite difficult.

Subsequently, the owners of the enclosure, as a rule, are faced with the need to catch part of the animals for various purposes, be it for sale or veterinary needs, etc. In small enclosures, adult males conflict and can cause serious injuries to each other, even leading to the death of animals, so raising elite trophies in such conditions is not an easy task. An excess of females in the enclosure, resulting from the predominant removal of males, necessitates their removal from the enclosure. Therefore, the structure of the enclosure should initially be thought out in such a way as to have several zones that allow a differentiated approach to the animals contained in them, depending on their purpose and plans for further use.

Such an enclosure system seems expensive and unnecessary at the initial stage, but in the future it can reduce costs and provide significant income by reducing losses and improving the quality of the resulting animals. The phased construction of areas of the enclosure complex, carried out over several years (as the livestock increases), allows us to avoid large one-time costs.

Farms of wild ungulates (deer farms, farms)

As a rule, they are created for the purpose of obtaining marketable products (meat and antlers), selling live animals, although growing elite trophies on a farm is much more efficient and faster.

In the West, there is a whole culture of consumption of delicious deer meat, starting with the fact that a restaurant visitor can know from which specific farm the meat was supplied, in what conditions it was raised and what the animal ate, and ending with a special technology for maturing the meat, without which the deer steak will not reach the desired softness and juiciness. Therefore, the production of venison represents a huge and as yet untapped market of interest to investors.

The leaders of reindeer farming - New Zealand and England over the past 30 years have actually turned deer farming into an agricultural industry using all the latest veterinary and livestock achievements.

The basis of reindeer farming is their grazing on pastures divided into paddocks. Rotating grazing paddocks during the summer is essential as deer are much more demanding of pasture quality than traditional farm animals.

Many years of experiment show that deer get along just fine without a forest if they are provided with good grass, a watering hole and a shelter from the sun in the summer, and hay or silage and shelter from the wind in the winter.

High quality pastures with young offspring of optimal height can only be ensured by constant changing of paddocks and mowing the grass in them, which imposes its own specifics on the design of farms.

The area of ​​the paddocks depends on many reasons, including the purpose of raising animals, the number of animals in the group, and the quality of pastures.

To design pens when building farms, it is important to determine how animals will winter and provide places for this. Traditional and simple is wintering in pasture paddocks. With this option, one should take into account trampling and excessive grazing of pastures, which significantly reduces their productivity in the next season and changes the composition of the vegetation cover. It is imperative to take into account the distance from the feed warehouse, the possibility of travel (hills, mud, snow), animal safety, and protection from the wind.

The best solution is to build small winter pens in convenient locations as close as possible to warehouses and technical bases. It is optimal to have a separate wintering pen for each group, since it is better for the groups to be permanent, with an established stable hierarchy and minimal competition between animals. Using the natural configuration of paddocks and existing forest plantations to protect, and in their absence, the construction of artificial protection, primarily from the wind. With appropriate protection and feeding, deer can withstand even very severe frosts.

A more advanced method is wintering under a roof (sheds, sheds, etc.), most often calves separated from their mothers winter this way, as they are the most sensitive and fastest growing (and therefore the most demanding of conditions).

The nature of the terrain also determines most of the decisions, and above all, the location of division into pens, the route of animal translocation corridors, the location of gates and places of capture.

The main element of the farm is a specially equipped pen for catching and carrying out all necessary veterinary procedures, equipped with a machine for restraining animals.

without a pen for catching , since conducting breeding work using only injectors for immobilization is extremely unproductive and expensive.

Fencing and mesh

Even 6-7 or more years ago, the fences of all enclosures were built from chain-link mesh with a mesh size of 100X100 mm or less, less often - from welded non-galvanized road mesh. The only advantage of the chain-link mesh was that its short rolls can be carried manually and installed in particularly hard-to-reach places - ravines, etc. The only advantage of the road network is its accessibility. There simply were no other materials.

But, the days of chain-link mesh are gone forever; now special fencing systems are used to fence enclosures, which are based on a galvanized steel mesh with a fixed knot, capable (often without repair!) of withstanding a tree falling onto the fence. The inventors of such a net are New Zealanders - the pioneers of modern farm reindeer husbandry.

The essence of the concept of “fencing system” is that the mesh along the entire perimeter is always in a tense state, which is achieved by using special fasteners to connect rolls of mesh (up to 100 m long) into a single whole, by fastening the wire to the posts without rigid fixation. All this requires special tools and technologies and forms elastic, durable fencing elements that work as a single unit for 200-400 m, resistant to impacts in any direction.

There are only 3 manufacturers of such mesh in Europe - TORNADO (England), NODIMOR (Portugal, FORTEMA (Spain). THIS NET IS NOT PRODUCED IN RUSSIA.

The height of a fence made of mesh with a fixed knot can be from 1.9 to 3 m. To keep deer, there is no need to bury the mesh in the ground.

Enclosure infrastructure facilities

Technological processes in the enclosure require the construction of special structures both for feeding the animals and for their removal (shooting, trapping) and the implementation of veterinary procedures.

1. Complex feeding areas.
2. Feeders for feeding hay.
3. Solonetz.
4. Towers for observing animals and shooting.
5. Watering holes.
6. Quarantine pen (quarantine).
7. Pedestrian paths.
8. Car roads.
9. Live trap.
10. Separator.

The infrastructure of enclosures is designed individually in relation to the goals and objectives of animal breeding and depends on the landscape and terrain.

Animals for enclosures.

1. Among deer, the most common species for keeping in hunting enclosures in our country, according to our experts, is the sika deer ( Cervus Nippon hortulorum). This is the most accessible and inexpensive type.
2. Maral (Siberian subspecies of red deer) is the second largest animal in hunting enclosures. This is due to the availability of primary purchase of animals from deer breeding farms.
3. The last 5 years have seen an explosion of interest in acquiring European red deer ( Cervus elaphus hippelaphus). It is this species that is traditionally cultivated in Europe, where it is the personification of the most valuable and prestigious trophy for a hunter. Once introduced to New Zealand, this species gave rise to the development of modern intensive reindeer farming and a culture of deer meat consumption.
4. Fallow deer ( Dama dama) - this medium-sized deer with characteristic spade-shaped antlers actively and confidently takes its place in the enclosures of the European part of Russia. Due to its small size, it is the most economical to maintain, and the meat has the highest gastronomic characteristics.
5. In the last 2 years, interest in keeping white-tailed deer has increased among individual owners. What drew attention to this species was the not entirely justified opinion about its hyper-fertility.
6. Mouflon ( Ovis musimon). This is the only representative of the genus of sheep living in Europe. Successfully kept in fenced areas. Not found in the wild in Russia, the most exotic inhabitant of our hunting enclosures.

Typically, mouflons are imported by farm owners who want to diversify the species composition of animals in enclosures and gain additional opportunities for trophy hunting. Traditionally, our hunters went to Europe to hunt mouflons, but we believe that in a few years worthy specimens of these rams will be raised in Russia.

1. Wild boar ( Sus scrofa).

Recently the most popular and easiest to breed, this hunting species is now going through hard times due to outbreaks of African swine fever, which has decimated the livestock of European Russia. The main feature of enclosure keeping wild boars is the need to deepen the fence by 30-50 cm due to its ability to undermine the fences, but at the same time not requiring a fence height of more than 180-200 cm. It is extremely undesirable to keep a boar in the same pen with deer, since, being an omnivorous animal , it poses a mortal danger to newborn fawns .

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The following combinations may be most common: all deer can be kept in enclosures in different combinations; the only difficulty lies in the difficulty of identifying females and young animals of different species when shooting in an enclosure.

Mouflon can be kept together with any deer, but requires close attention from staff, since females and young mouflons cannot compete for food in feeding areas with deer; this problem is especially acute in winter.

Supply of wild ungulates (Who can buy deer from in Moscow?)

The main task that arises when creating an enclosure is the acquisition of animals.

If you only need a few animals, they are easy to find in Russia and delivered to the farm. Private enclosures offer almost all types of deer; just type the phrase “buy deer” into a search engine.

But, as a rule, domestic suppliers cannot provide the necessary selection either by gender or age of any large batch. The gender and age composition of groups of animals offered for sale within Russia almost always differs from the wishes of the customer, since the formation of batches of animals occurs based on the results of catching with live traps in enclosures, or immobilizing animals. At the same time, the selectivity of capture is extremely limited.

In addition, prices for Russian animals are often formed based on the wishes of the owners and may exceed the cost of imported animals.

When importing animals, DeerLand LLC has the opportunity to form batches by sex and age in accordance with agreements with the customer, which is due to the presence of its own quarantine in Europe and extensive partnerships with breeding farms for breeding European red deer, European fallow deer, and European mouflon. In addition, imported animals can undergo all prescribed veterinary quarantine procedures at the base of Dearland LLC in Russia.

What is needed to create an aviary?

If you are thinking about creating an aviary, expert advice will not be superfluous.

Call us!
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Description of the breed

The wild boar is a close relative of the domestic pig, but differs in some characteristics. The boar has long legs and thick fur. The head is wedge-shaped with a short neck. On the muzzle there is a cartilaginous patch that serves the animal for digging the ground and moving stones.

The jaws of cleavers are equipped with large fangs (up to 12 cm), protruding outwards and representing a formidable weapon. The female boar's tusks are not visible under her lips. The length of a large specimen of the animal reaches more than two meters (females are significantly inferior in size). The weight of an adult wild boar is 80-150 kg, some individuals reach an average weight of 250-270 kg. The wild forest pig lives from 20 to 30 years. Of the sense organs, smell and hearing are especially well developed, vision is poor.

Breeding

In recent years, wild boar farming has been gaining momentum. Compared to domestic pigs, avoid diseases

When breeding wild boars, it is worth considering some features. To keep an animal, a large metal enclosure and several individual pens are required. Considering that the wild pig loves to dig, the fencing sections should fit snugly to the ground and be securely fastened.

Important! When entering the enclosure of wild animals, safety precautions are required. Cleaning is best done when there are no wild boars.

Wild pigs are vulnerable to overheating when exposed to the sun for a long time, so a tent made of lightweight materials will certainly be provided in the pen. The floor does not need to be covered; they will happily tear up the ground in search of worms, roots and insects.

The cleaver is nervous from the bites of parasites, so it is advisable to make a shallow pond where the cattle will lie under a layer of mud, protecting the body from overheating and parasites.

Interesting! In the pens you can build original scratchers for wild boars from wooden beams.

Features of keeping and breeding wild boars

The main requirement for raising wild boars is to keep them in spacious pens. The area of ​​the enclosure reaches about 20 m2 for two individuals, the size of the shelter house is 3 m2.

The animal pen must be fenced with a stable high fence (at least a meter) made of metal materials or mesh.

Important!

When entering a wild boar enclosure, you must follow safety precautions. It is better to clean the pen if there are no wild boars in it.

Wild boars, like domestic pigs, are very sensitive to overheating when exposed to sunlight for a long time. When building pens for these animals, it is necessary to install canopies made of lightweight materials.

It is not necessary to cover the floor in the pen; ordinary soil will do. Animals will happily tear it apart in search of insects, worms and roots.

For your information!

You can also construct homemade boar scratchers from wooden poles in the pen.

Feeding

In order for a wild boar to grow and develop properly, it will need a balanced diet. In home breeding, the person himself monitors the regularity and completeness of the animals’ diet.

The wild boar in the farmstead loves high-quality food and can eat up to five kilograms of food per day. To reduce the cost of feeding their pets, farmers often switch to combined feeds and concentrates, and also feed food waste. The menu must include fresh grass, nuts and acorns, which contain a lot of fats and proteins. The boar's protein deficiency is supplemented with minced meat, cottage cheese, fish waste or small rodents.

As a rule, the boar eats grain crops (wheat and oats), cereals (corn and some peas), and fresh green feed in the summer. Piglets like fruits, vegetables and tops with mown grass. The wild pig is well versed in herbs and will never chew poisonous vegetation.

There is no need to overfeed livestock, otherwise the ability to reproduce may decrease, so how much a pig weighs is not the most important indicator.

When a boar is six months old, its meat is already suitable for sale. If an animal is bred for meat, then at one year of age its growth slows down significantly, and keeping it becomes unprofitable.

Summer food

On warm days, a wild boar should eat heartily, but it should not be heavy on the stomach. It is necessary to include solid and wet food in the menu. The main food base is legumes (soybeans, peas), protein, greens and fiber. Be sure to add grains to gain weight. On summer days, wild boars eat three times a day; water should be in the most accessible place.

Winter diet

The diet of wild boar in the cold season consists mainly of concentrates and feed with grass meal. The optimal food is considered to be a mixture of legumes and grain crops with vitamin and mineral supplements. In cold weather, a boar also has three meals a day.

Features of feeding wild boars on farms

What do they feed wild boars? In order for wild boars to grow and develop, they need proper and balanced nutrition. Wild boars in nature saturate their diet with all the necessary ingredients.

They dig the ground, feed on young shoots and roots of plants, insects and worms, and hunt small rodents.

When keeping wild boars at home, a person must himself regulate the completeness of their diets in terms of all necessary nutrients.

The boar's diet must be balanced according to the following components:

• protein;
• cellulose;
• fats;
• vitamins and minerals.

For wild boars kept in captivity, minerals and vitamins are important in the diet, which must be introduced artificially per 1 ton of feed:

• vitamin A – 1 million units,
• vitamin D – 0.2 million units,
• biolischina – 10 g.,
• iron sulfate – 100 g.,
• zinc sulfate – 100 g.,
• copper – 15 g.,
• manganese – 15 g.,
• cobalt – 5 g.,
• potassium iodide – 2 gr.

The daily diet of wild boars must include nuts and acorns, which contain a lot of protein, vitamins and fat.

Young boars can prepare porridge from grain mixtures. Feed root vegetables, fruits, fresh and boiled vegetables, greens and branches of young bushes. You can replenish the lack of protein in the body of animals by feeding them minced meat, fish waste, buttermilk, cottage cheese, milk, small rodents, worms, and chickens.

Wild boars are the direct ancestors of domestic animals; they are distinguished by their flexible character, calm disposition, and high intelligence. An adult boar should eat up to 6-7 kg of pig feed of varied composition per day.

Remember!

Such distinctive features of wild boars as multiple births, high resistance to diseases, and the ability to eat inexpensive food served as prerequisites for breeding wild boars in hunting farms in order to obtain valuable meat. When properly fed, these animals quickly gain weight and reproduce productively.

A wild boar is an animal belonging to the order Artiodactyla, the family of pigs. This is a large, stocky forest dweller; the average weight of an adult male can exceed 250 kg. To gain such a substantial mass, the boar must be well fed. Let's figure out what the wild boar eats.

These wild pigs are omnivores, their “menu” includes plant foods

in large quantities, including underground parts of plants:

• bulbs;
• rhizomes;
• tubers;
• roots.

Ground parts of plants: foliage, branches.

• mushrooms;
• juicy and dry fruits and berries, nuts and acorns;
• tree branches and grass preserved in the snow help wild boars in harsh winters.

In addition to plant foods, wild boars also love animal foods:

• snails;
• larvae;
• lizards;
• frogs;
• rodents;
• birds.

If necessary, they do not disdain carrion.

The diet can vary depending on where exactly the boar lives, and their range of presence is impressive: from the warm zones of Western Europe to the harsh conditions of the Far East and north.

What does a wild boar eat in the forest? This largely depends on the time of year in which the animal has to survive, as well as on the availability of food. The boar does not have any specific type of food

, so he gets the food that is abundant at this time of year.

in winter

During the harshest time of the year, things are tough for wild boars; not all of them manage to survive the lack of food. In the snow, animals pull out acorns that have fallen in autumn, undermine roots, and hunt mice, guided by their instincts. Common horsetail, which is unattractive to boars in summer, is also used as food. During the thaw period, when the snow becomes soft, wild boars have the opportunity to extract roots of bushes and trees from underground. In particularly hungry times, a wild boar may well eat tree bark, branches, even carrion. But due to the peculiarities of the digestive system, boars are not particularly fond of branches, leaves, dry grass and mosses; this is only forced food.

When winter gradually recedes, wild boars have the opportunity to dilute their diet with plant rhizomes:

• oak anemone;
• bought;
• Highlander;
• dandelion roots.

As the snow melts, the diet of wild pigs becomes more varied.

in spring

What does a pig eat in the wild in the spring, when nature is just coming to life and there is little food? The basis of the diet is branches of trees and shrubs, rhizomes, the first flowers, acorns and nuts thawed from under the snow. In the second half of spring, the problem with food gradually disappears; nature provides boars with an abundance of green shoots and leaves; these wild animals love to feast on juicy sedge

, which is especially tender and good only in May. Closer to summer, the boar gets the opportunity to eat animal food.

April-May is the time for the fish diet of wild boars; at this time, fish of many species enter the flood meadows to spawn.

In summer

The forest is rich in animal food, so wild pigs have plenty of freedom - they can eat larvae, beetles, rodents, hedgehogs and mice. A large boar can kill even a nimble hare or its cub. In addition to animal food, there is also plant food, which grows in abundance in the summer: wild boars eat fruits and berries, bulbs and rhizomes.

By summer, tree shoots become coarse and unattractive to boars, so they prefer underground parts or fruits. Wild pigs are hungry for apples and often destroy farmland.

It is during the fertile summer period that the female teaches the cubs to get food

Therefore, wild boars often attack entire families of cultivated fields, causing enormous damage. The area of ​​their attention includes potato fields, fields of rye, oats, and wheat.

in autumn

Autumn is the time for the ripening of fruits and berries, so wild pigs continue to get them, they also switch to their favorite food, nuts and acorns, which is why wild boars can often be found in oak groves. In addition to boars, acorns are also loved by some other inhabitants of the forest: chipmunks, squirrels, bears, deer.

The harvest is ripe in the fields and gardens, so wild pigs become a real disaster for gardeners and farmers; they mercilessly destroy the beds, devouring the fruits of labor: cabbage, root vegetables, potatoes, pumpkin, carrots. These fanged monsters love corn, so they attack fields, causing huge losses.

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In the fall, the offspring of rodents also grow up, so the boar can supplement its diet with the juicy meat of a young hare.

Reproduction

Sexual maturity in a female boar occurs in the second year of life, in males - in the fourth or fifth. The wild boar will mate in November-December. At the beginning of the rut, fierce battles for the female are observed between the loppers. A well-developed strong plexus of connective tissue formed in adult males protects against dangerous wounds of an opponent.

In March-April, female forest boars make their home out of dry grass and leaves with high sides. An average of 4 to 12 piglets will be born here. For the first two decades, the boar calf does not leave the den, and the female feeds it every 3-4 hours. A month after birth, piglets can already obtain a minimum amount of rhizomes on their own.

Later, the young mother goes out to feed with her slightly grown hogs. Often several females with their brood unite and stay in one group.

The distinctive features of the boar (multiple fertility, resistance to diseases, feeding on inexpensive food) serve as prerequisites for their breeding in order to obtain the most valuable meat. With careful care and rearing, this species of wild boar will quickly gain weight and begin to reproduce productively.