State's only deer farm gets sudden boost from mad cow scare

09:02 AM EST on Sunday, January 4, 2004

BY FELICE J. FREYER
Journal Staff Writer

BURRILLVILLE -- Two things happened, around the same time, to bring hints of change to John Barnatowicz's business.

Newspapers bearing scary headlines about mad cow disease landed on doorsteps, and the January issue of Rhode Island Monthly showed up in subscribers' mailboxes.

The headlines inspired a fear of beef. The magazine featured a story on Barnatowicz's Granite Acres Deer Farm. A light went off in a few heads.

And so it came about that people from places like Barrington have been making their way up the winding, bumpy roads of Burrillville to seek out John Barnatowicz, his deer farm, and especially, the purplish-red venison that, because it comes from deer, can't possibly carry mad cow disease.

Not hundreds of people, not a traffic jam, but enough new customers to make Barnatowicz think he might someday make a living off the sideline he started in 1996 to pay the taxes on the family farm.

Several people have told him they want his venison as a substitute for beef, because of reports that a cow in Washington had mad cow disease, the first case in the United States. Barnatowicz has been selling his venison primarily to restaurants.

The venison -- sold as burger meat ($5 a pound), roast top round ($10 a pound), sirloin steaks ($14 a pound), tenderloin ($20 a pound), among other cuts -- is actually a byproduct of the deer-farm business.

Barnatowicz, a commercial builder by trade, raises the deer chiefly for their antlers, which are pulverized, packed into capsules, and sold as a supplement that purportedly relieves pain and boosts immunity.

But some deer are runts, some males don't grow good antlers, some females don't produce babies, and the herd needs to stay between 100 and 150 deer. So every year a number of deer are shipped to a slaughterhouse in Maine.

The deer muscle -- about 125 to 130 pounds per deer -- returns to the freezer in the shed that serves as the farm's store, open only on weekends.

Journal photo / Steve Szydlowski Owner John Barnatowicz shows Josie and David Tripodi different cuts of venison.

The deer heads are shipped to the Maine state veterinarian's laboratory to be tested for chronic wasting disease, the deer version of mad cow disease.

Yes, it's a bit ironic, but chronic wasting disease may be more prevalent among deer in this country than mad cow is among cows. Many states, including Rhode Island and Massachusetts, have banned the importation of deer because chronic wasting disease has been found in wild deer and elk out West.

But there has never been a case diagnosed in the species raised on Granite Acres -- red deer, which are indigenous to Europe. Chronic wasting disease also has never been detected in Rhode Island, where the state has performed tests on wild deer.

Though it's not required, Barnatowicz decided to have every deer he slaughters tested for the disease, and none has shown a trace of it. He says his farming practices are exceptionally safe and organic. His deer live on grass and hay, with no additives except for mineral supplements in the grain -- selenium, magnesium, and copper.

Barnatowicz, who at 58 still bears a full head of shaggy blond hair, got the idea for the deer farm -- the only one in Rhode Island -- when the taxes quadrupled on his 70 acres on Smith Road in the Harrisville section. He couldn't afford the taxes, but Barnatowicz didn't want to do what so many others have done around Rhode Island -- sell the farm for houselots.

His grandfather bought the land in 1929 and raised pigs there until World War II. His father used it to breed and raise thoroughbreds in the 1960s, and then, as a hobby, raised beef cattle in the '70s and '80s. When his father died in the 1990s, Barnatowicz was too busy for such a hobby.

But it nurtured his family, as it always had. With its spring-fed pond and 13-room farmhouse, Granite Acres was a family gathering place. "Everyone comes up and has a good time," Barnatowicz said. "If you lose that, it seems like you lose a family."

He read an article in the Boston Globe about deer farming in Maine, visited some farms in Maine, talked with some deer-farm organizations, researched the preparations he would need to make, and decided to take the plunge.

Journal photo / Steve Szydlowski MEAT COUNTER: Deer number 126 is part of the herd raised on Granite Acres Deer Farm in Burrillville.

It took a year to get everything ready, including the 10-foot-high fences and the deer-handling setup in the barn. Then, at the end of 1996, with a permit from the Department of Environmental Management, Barnatowicz brought in 20 male red deer. They were soon joined by 20 pregnant females. He's been breeding them ever since, and now has about 100. This year his deer yielded 4,000 pounds of meat.

Taking care of deer is not especially hard, which is why Barnatowicz thinks deer farming will be a good retirement activity for him in a few years.

Once a week, Barnatowicz and Henry Duranleau, his brother-in-law and partner, toss out three 1,400-pound bales of hay for the deer to munch at their leisure. Later in the week, they'll throw them another bale. His land is crisscrossed by spring-fed streams, so he needs to provide water only in the height of the summer or during droughts.

ON A GRAY afternoon last week, Barnatowicz summons the deer to oblige a photographer. Mating season is making the "boys" unsociable -- they're hiding over the hill -- but the "girls" are clustered near a fence, many lounging on the grass.

"Girls! Girls!" Barnatowicz calls, and several pick their heads up, alert, tense, all ears. A few start walking toward him. But only when Duranleau brings out some feed do they all come forward. Some are German in origin, and a few are the elegant Yugoslavians, with slender legs and long necks. The girls eat, pausing often to lift their big-eared heads and observe the people.

In the spring, male deer grow antlers coated in a velvet so deep and soft that fingers crave its feel. In May and June, with 60 days' growth, the antlers are big enough, but haven't yet hardened. This is when they are removed.

To corral the deer for the antler harvest, the farmers built high-fenced pathways that zigzag toward the barn. When running away, deer tend to make turns, so when urged toward the barn, they naturally twist along the fences and into the compartments inside, breaking down into smaller groups. Then they are led singly up a corridor that narrows until the deer is wedged between two curved wooden walls covered in cloth. Each of these males weighs 450 to 550 pounds.

Once a deer is caught, the farmer opens a slender trap door underneath, and the animal falls down about a foot, so that its head is now immobilized between the walls and the antlers are eye-level to the man.

Next, anesthesia. Barnatowicz uses a system developed by a dentist who also farms deer. A small device delivers TENS (transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation), a numbing electrical current. Dentists use TENS for drug-free local anesthesia, and the paperback-sized box that Barnatowicz employs is the selfsame dental device, except that its wires attach to big angel-wing clamps. The clamps go on each side of the antler.

"I know for a fact it works. I did it on myself," Barnatowicz says. "It took 30 seconds to go numb, and my finger stayed numb for three hours."

With a hand saw little bigger than a kitchen knife, the farmers slice off the still-soft antlers. The antlers go to "a guy in Maine" who dehydrates them in a special process intended to preserve the active ingredients. Every 3 pounds of raw antler yields 1,600 pills. Barnatowicz sells the pills locally by word of mouth or mail order, at $35 a bottle.

Barnatowicz and Duranleau say they take the velvet-antler capsules daily and swear by their pain-relieving properties. He says some kind of "medicine," some health-promoting substance, courses through the antlers when the male deer grow new ones each spring. As with most supplements, the velvet antler pills are unregulated and their therapeutic value unproven.

Neither a desire for velvet-antler supplements nor a fear of mad cow disease brought Josie and David Tripodi, of Danielson, Conn., to Barnatowicz's shed the other day. They simply love venison, and their hunting friends came back empty-handed this year.

The Tripodis are not indifferent to matters of health, however. But their focus is an ailment that every day kills more people than mad cow has ever affected -- heart disease. And for that, the low-fat venison is just the thing.

"I'm always on a diet," said David Tripodi. His diet book puts little hearts next to foods that are OK to eat. Venison is the only red meat that merits a heart.

After chatting about cooking techniques with Barnatowicz (who recommends marinating half the steak in teriyaki sauce, and sprinkling the other half with onion salt and garlic salt), the Tripodis leave with an armload of low-fat, disease-free deer meat, grown on a Burrillville farm.

Granite Acres Deer Farm, 144 Smith Rd., Harrisville, can be reached at (800) 301-0964 or (401) 568-4045, or by e-mail at graniteacres [at] msn.com.