The animals have endured one of the wettest winters on record here at Peel Forest with miserable conditions. We welcomed Spring with open arms and it was very satisfying to see the stock back on grass leading into the velvet season.

As an industry we are lucky to have such a diverse animal that can serve more than one market. With Venison prices lower than we would like, being able to prop up our bank balances with a strong velvet market certainly helps the bottom line. The velvet industry has been consistently solid the last few years and with the healthy food sector in China gaining more traction I see the demand for our velvet continuing on an upward trend. With this in mind, we must produce the type of velvet the buyer seeks. Clean, traditional style velvet is so important and we as breeders MUST meet the demands of our markets.

We have made a conscious effort to put up stags this year that are going to produce traditional style velvet. Not only does this serve our markets well with the type of velvet they require, it also pays a far better return than the NT grade as you will be experiencing yourselves. The price gap is getting greater every year between traditional and NT so why would you breed with sires that don’t exhibit these traditional traits.

The line up this year is averaging 7.51kg over 25 predominantly English stags. We have a few new sires on offer and a very exciting new way of viewing the velvet with a 3D view (see video’s below) of each head allowing you to see every aspect of the stick. We felt this was important with difficult travel conditions nowadays giving you more confidence to bid online.

Finally, we are running our sale as a Hybrid sale alongside BIDR so if you can’t make it on the day you’ll still be able to bid online, which seems to be working very well.

Look forward to seeing you on the day