Tukituki Land Care is celebrating all the great work being done by local farmers in the Tukituki sub-catchments. They met with Grant Charteris, a Tikokino deer farmer with a passion for on-farm environmental enhancement.

Backing onto the Gwavas Forest which backs onto the Ruahine Ranges, Forest Road Deer.
Farm is 327 hectares of rolling to steep hill country at a high enough elevation to mean a colder climate than much of Hawkes Bay.

Grant and Sally Charteris are passionate about deer farming and keen to showcase their deer farming story.

Like many of his peers, Grant Charteris of Forest Road Farm considers growing deer velvet to be an addiction. Grant explains that the reason for significant growth in the deer industry over the past 40 years is that while growth rate traits and body weight traits have a heritability of about 30%, velvet traits have a heritability of about 80%.

There's a certain infectious romance to farming deer for velvet for Hawke's Bay farmer Grant Charteris.