A pair of velvet antlers harvested on a deer farm in Tainan’s Yongkang District (永康) has established a new record in the nation, weighing 16.2kg, farm owner Chang Jung-hui (張榮輝) said yesterday.
The velvet antlers, a common ingredient in traditional Chinese medicine, were 1.1kg heavier than the previous record holder, Chang said.
Members of the Deer Farmer Association visited the Hui Deer Farm yesterday to witness the harvesting.
Photo: CNA, Chang Jung-hui
According to Chang, the sambar deer from which the antlers were harvested had a good pedigree, adding that when the deer had its “first cut” three years ago, it had already taken second place for velvet antler weight across the nation.
By the third cut last year, the deer’s velvet antlers weighed 13.3kg and was the champion for the national velvet antler weight competition for sambar deer, Chang said.
In Taiwanese deer-raising terminology, the unit for counting the harvesting of velvet antlers are “cuts,” with cuts behind held annually at first, then increasing in frequency. The antlers harvested this year were the fourth cut of the year.
Chang said that while the farm grew its own deer feed — mulberry leaves, bur clover and Spanish needles — and used fans or sprayed water to lower the temperature during hot days, the deer’s pedigree was the main reason it was able to grow such large antlers.
Meanwhile, association director-general Wen Chih-chun (溫志崇) said the association also held an impromptu event for those attending the harvest to guess the weight of the antlers, with the two closest guesses receiving 750g and 375g of velvet antlers respectively.
Wen said the majority of velvet antlers are either ground into powder or put into alcohol, adding that there were more than 600 farms — with a population of 21,000 sambar deer — across the nation.
The nation produces about 24 tonnes of velvet antlers per year, Wen said.
Wen said that efforts to promote domestic-grown and harvested velvet antlers were successful as the public increasingly prioritizes where velvet antlers originate, adding that members of the public should visit the deer farms and choose their own antlers to ensure quality and freshness.
Wen called on the public to avoid purchasing velvet antlers from unknown origins.
BILINGUAL PLAN: The 17 educators were recruited under a program that seeks to empower Taiwanese, the envoy to the Philippines said The Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in the Philippines on Thursday hosted a send-off event for the first group of English-language teachers from the country who were recruited for a Ministry of Education-initiated program to advance bilingual education in Taiwan. The 14 teachers and three teaching assistants are part of the Taiwan Foreign English Teacher Program, which aims to help find English-language instructors for Taiwan’s public elementary and junior-high schools, the office said. Seventy-seven teachers and 11 teaching assistants from the Philippines have been hired to teach in Taiwan in the coming school year, office data showed. Among the first group is 57-year-old
Police have detained a Taoyuan couple suspected of over the past two months colluding with human trafficking rings and employment scammers in Southeast Asia to send nearly 100 Taiwanese jobseekers to Cambodia. At a media briefing in Taipei yesterday, the Criminal Investigation Bureau presented items seized from the couple, including alleged victims’ passports, forged COVID-19 vaccination records, mobile phones, bank documents, checks and cash. The man, surnamed Tsai (蔡), and his girlfriend, surnamed Tsan (詹), were taken into custody last month, after police at Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport stopped four jobseekers from boarding a flight to Phnom Penh, said Dustin Lee (李泱輯),
‘ORDINARY PEOPLE’: A man watching Taiwanese military drills said that there would be nothing anyone could do if the situation escalates in the Taiwan Strait Many people in Taiwan look upon China’s military exercises over the past week with calm resignation, doubting that war is imminent and if anything, feeling pride in their nation’s determination to defend itself. After a visit to Taiwan last week by US House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi, China has sent ships and aircraft across an unofficial buffer between Taiwan and China’s coast and missiles over Taipei and into waters surrounding the nation since Thursday last week. However, Rosa Chang, proudly watching her son take part in Taiwanese military exercises that included dozens of howitzers firing shells into the Taiwan Strait off
TRAPPED IN CAMBODIA: A woman said that a job offer in Cambodia led to her being imprisoned in a fenced industrial park, where she was sold four times in a week An inter-ministerial task force has been set up by the Executive Yuan to tackle the issue of Taiwanese being lured to Cambodia with promises of high-paying jobs, but getting stuck there as targets of human trafficking, Executive Yuan spokesman Lo Ping-cheng (羅秉成) said on Thursday. Legislators, including Lin Chun-hsien (林俊憲) of the Democratic Progressive Party, told a news conference that a task force should be set up to address problems exposed by reports of Taiwanese being lured to Cambodia, Myanmar and other countries with promises of lucrative jobs before being forced into illegal work while being subject to abuse. Later in the
RSS