Nurseries to serve venison to toddlers to combat wild deer population boom - as caterer says children should be 'experimenting' with their food

Top Days Nurseries will serve 3,000 meals using wild meats every month Read More: Middle class mums 'flexi-schooling' their children! Meet the parents going to extraordinary lengths to teach their children from home part-time

Nurseries are set to serve venison to children in a bid to tackle the growing numbers of wild deer – as a caterer says toddlers should be ‘experimenting’ with their food.

Tops Day Nurseries, which oversees 32 nurseries in Dorset and Hampshire, has recently introduced venison to their lunch menus as part of their campaign with Eat Wild.

The UK’s development board for wild meat have come up with five dishes that will be rolled out in other nurseries and schools across the country in coming months.

Outlining the new menu to parents, Top Days Nurseries explained on their website how children will be given two wild meat meals twice every three weeks – adding up to 3,000 a month.

Pete Ttofis – Top Day Nurseries’ Catering Manager – explained how the 4,000 children will get their first taste of venison in meals that are already familiar to them, such as spaghetti bolognaise.

Pictured: a child that is currently enrolled at a Top Days Nursery seen tucking into their new range of wild meat meals

He said: ‘We believe that giving wild foods a try and experimenting with our food diversity is something we should be exploring. Food should be fun, exciting, new, and delicious!’

‘After a bit of research, we discovered that the nutritional value of game was excellent, and contained less fat, as much protein and nutrients like vitamin B-12, iron and zinc as our typical household meats like beef, chicken, lamb and pork.’

Items on the Top Days Nurseries menu include venison spaghetti bolognaise and orzo bake. The wild meat is high in iron, protein and Omega 3 while also being low in fat.

On top of this, the nurseries are also experimenting with game pasties, wraps and burgers for children. Game tends to have less calories and is lower in saturated fat.

Speaking to The Times, Louisa Clutterbuck – who is Eat Wild’s Chief Executive – explained how the venison is currently being sourced from two estates in the South Downs, which are overrun with deer.

She said: ‘The deer population is out of control so there is absolutely no problem with supply, there is oversupply at the moment.’

According to the Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, there are currently up to 2m wild deer in the UK after a two-year pause on culling during the pandemic.

As there are no natural predators, the booming deer population has negatively affected woodland biodiversity through over-foraging.

Items on the Top Days Nurseries menu include venison spaghetti bolognaise (pictured) and orzo bake

Pete Ttofis (right) – Top Day Nurseries’ Catering Manager – and Leon Challis-Davies (Culinary Director at British Game Assurance, left) pictured ahead of the roll-out of wild meat meals

According to Eat Wild, the deer population in the UK is only going to continue booming as a result of the government’s pledged to plant 30,000 hectares of trees annually until 2050.

As such, the organisation decided to turn their attention to the education sector, which has largely never used wild meat in their kitchens before.

The expert added: ‘We are trying to create more demand and rather than people seeing game as a restaurant and very high end, Michelin-star meat, we want it to be served at your local pub and taken home and cooked as a midweek meal.

On top of this, the organisation is also trying to get wild meats supplied in prisons and sports stadiums to crack down on the deer population.

In 2021, it was reported that deers cause £45m of damage to cars each year. The deer are also costing agricultural businesses an average of £20,000-a-year by damaging crops.

Currently, 350,000 deer are being culled every year – but conservationists reportedly want the population to drop below 1m to combat their ecological impact.

Leon Challis-Davies, Culinary director at Eat Wild, added: ‘There are lots of reasons why getting wild and sustainable meat onto school menus is so important [….]

‘First and foremost, though, it’s so important that we get the younger generation to eat more nutritional and vitamin-rich food to help them develop.

‘Wild meat is not only healthier, but it’s also more sustainable than what we consume from our current meat-producing sector. It’s much more flavoursome too.

‘For the countryside community in particular, this is a huge win, and we hope to take it to the next level and introduce wild meat into higher education and beyond.’