Idris, Ismail

Moin, Saidi

Universiti Putra Malaysia Institutional Repository

FOR Category F10900: Agricultural SciencesPERFORMANCE OF DOMESTICATED SAMBARDEER (CERVUS UNICOLOR)Ismail bin Idris and Saidi bin MoinFaculty of AgricultureUniversiti Putra Malaysia, 43400 UPM, Serdang, Selangor,Malaysia, and Faculty of Biological Science, UKMKeywords: sambar deer, deer farming, weight, height,heart girth.IntroductionDeer are found throughout the world either in the wild or asfarmed animals. Several species of deer have been farmedwhile many others are still in the wild state. The Samba deer(Cervus unicolor) is indigenous to Malaysia (Medway,1978). Of 16 subspecies of the Cervus unicolor, Cervus uni-color equinus is found in Peninsular Malaysia and the Cervusunicolor brookei in the Borneo island. The deer are still inthe process of domestication. In some countries, like Austra-lia, the population of wild deer is much larger than that offarmed deer although it is already a firmly established ruralindustry). The Sambar deer, which is indigenous to Malaysiaunder the national wildlife regulation, is not allowed to befarmed. Since about 15 years ago domesticated deer farmingwas introduced to Malaysia and this new farming industry islikely to grow in the future (Vidyadaran, 1993). However,the deer are mostly animals of the forest fringe, rather thanthe forest itself.Materials and MethodsSambar deer raised in three government farms were utilisedfor this study. The farms are in three states of Malaysia,namely Perak in Peninsular Malaysia, and Sabah andSarawak in East Malaysia. The Perak farm is under the Na-tional Park and Wildlife Department. The Sabah farm is atthe Livestock Breeding Station, Department of VeterinaryServices and Animal Industry, Sebrang, Keningau, and theSarawak farm is at the Sabah Agroforestry Centre of theSarawak Forestry Department. The farms at the three loca-tions have different number of animals, with 44 in Perak, 25in Sabah, and 46 in Sarawak. Their ages vary from threeweeks to about seven years. The animals were allowed tograze the grass and shrubs freely. Supplementary feeding ofcattle pellets or freshly cut green herbage was given. Theanimals were divided into groups and put into different pad-docks. Data gathering was carried out during 1997 and 1998.Results and DiscussionThe Sambar deer are year-round breeders, unlike the Reddeer (Cervus Elaphus) or the Rusa deer or Java deer (Cervustimorensis) which are seasonal breeders (Strangaard and Si-monsen, 1993). In the Perak farm the deer were kept togetherwhere several mature stags, mature hinds and fawns were inone paddock, with natural mating practised. Although Slee(1984) indicated that the stags do not gather harems or fightfor possession of hind it was observed that usually a domi-nant stag will control many hinds. Normally the dominantstags that perform most of the matings are those which havedeveloped antlers. once their antlers falloff they will becomedocile, and another stag with newly developed antler willtake over. The gestation period of the Sambar deer is be-tween eight and nine months. Normally the hind will calvedown in hiding and keep their fawns away for about a month.After this time only will the mothers bring out their fawns.The fawns will normally be born healthy and they will takecare of themselves naturally. The mortality rate is about 5%.It is evident that the Sambar deer will grow best under theirnatural environment. But to facilitate management of thedeer farming reduced shading could be practised. The deerare highly nervous and temperamental but became more set-tled with regular human contact and feeding. The Sambardeer are a large species with a solid build. A fawn at threeweeks old had a body weight of 15 kg and a height of 60 cmat the wither, while its body length is 89 cm.). The correla-tion coefficients between weight and height, weight and bodylength, weight and heart girth, height and body length, heightand heart girth, and body length and heart girth of 0.63, 0.78,0.61, 0.70, 0.60, and 0.77, respectively, were very highlysignificant. Thus, height, body length and heart girth aregood indicators of weight. These are useful especially fordeer where individual measurements are not always possibleand weights more often have to be estimated.Height, length and location had very highly significant(p<.OOl) effects on body weight. The mean height of deerwas 90.17 ± 1.33 cm while the mean weight was 82.98 ±3.14 kg. The highly significant effect of location on weightindicated that the different management systems could influ-ence the growth of the deer. The deer at the Perak farm witha mean height of 100.18 ± 1.64 cm and a mean weight of97.39 ± 4.58 kg was the tallest and the heaviest among thethree groups. This could be attributed to the paddocks beingmore shaded, giving the atmosphere of the natural environ-ment of the jungle, their natural habitat. The presence ofshrubs and undergrowth for browsing may lead to betterbody growth and weight gainConclusionsA trend existed where shading has helped in increasing per-cent calving and survival rate over the period of the study.Height, body length and heart girth are good indicators ofweight. The increase in domesticated deer farming will addto the varieties of red meat available to the general consum-ing public.ReferencesMedway, L. 1978. The wild mammals of Malaya (peninsular Malay-sia) and Singapore. Oxford University Press, Kuala Lumpur,Malaysia. pp 106-107.Slee, K. 1984. The Sambar deer in Victoria. In T. O. Hungerford(Ed.). Deer Refresher Course Proceedining No. 72, University ofSydney, pp 559.Strangaard, H. and Simonsen, V. 1993. Genetic differentiation inpopulations of red deer, Cervus elaphus, in Denmark. Hereditas119: 171-177.Vidyadaran, M. K., Jaffar, M. and Ibrahim, J. 1993. The deer indus-try in Malaysia. In Fatimah C. T. N. I., Ramlah, A. H. and Baha-man, A. R. (Eds.). The animal industry in Malaysia. UniversitiPertanian Malaysia, Malaysia. p. 111-119.Supported by IRPA Grant 01 -02-04-010991

Performance of domesticated Sambar deer (Cervus unicolor)

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Performance of domesticated Sambar deer (Cervus unicolor)

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