Arawata
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Profile
Arawata Deer Farm is Owned by John & Mel Somerville, who farm at Pine Bush , Southland. ,
History
Ever since the partnership started in 1979, our emphsis was on Velvet, Size & temperment. In the mid 1980's we purchased a stag from the Festl park (Germany) whom we called Dick. He became the backbone of our breeding for the next 10 years with his very correct antler structure & strong tops. We complemented him with stags from P Fraser, ( mainly sons of Caesar & Buccaneer ) with their thick velvet & good body conformation. We also did an extensive AI programs, using Warnham park sires such as Ramasses, James, Charles Rupert, the Sultan, Austin & recently Buller & Zama .We also introduced some trophy lines with AI, using semen from Brusnik, Motsumi, Adonis, King ,Platinum & Hannibal. We have bred some industry leading sires including Lotto, Magnum, Goldie, Cassius and Titan. We introduced Van Gogh & Icon to our breeding programe a few years ago and in recent years added English sires Aswan, Claudius & Ulysses. Our emphasis is still the same producing big well natured stags with very correct & heavy velvet plus with some emphasis now on the trophy side.
