Lamb-finishing weights have risen sharply, they have a successful steer-finishing business and the overall farm performance has improved.
The Pukerau farmers buy 1400 weaner deer from February to July, with three-quarters killed before Christmas.
The extra space freed up by prime deer exiting the property coincided with increased demand for feed from their sheep.
Mr Scott, the Southland-Fiordland branch of the New Zealand Deer Farmers Association monitor farmer, told a recent field day that frustration at the presence of Johne's forced him to stop running a breeding hind herd about 10 years ago.
In a particularly bad year he lost 40 out of 240 weaners to the disease.
He found that weaners bred on the farm were suffering from the wasting disease, but when he started buying in weaners it largely disappeared, although the disease has reappeared in some lines he now bought in.
Mr Scott said it appeared some weaners were arriving on his farm still young enough to contract the disease.
"It is something I don't want to get any worse or I'll be moving away from deer," he said.
Spring is a busy season, for weighing and sending deer to the works as well as lambing, but deer fitted into his wider farm business, especially in the traditionally tight feed month of October.
Last September, he sold 70 prime deer, and in October two draughts of 100 each.
Last year, half the deer were sold by the end of November, giving his 1650 ewes and 600 hoggets extra space.
For the past four years, he has lambed hoggets on the deer unit from October.
"It's the total integration that makes the deer unit profitable."
It meant his farm was heavily stocked over winter at 17.8 stock units a ha, but the pressure was quickly alleviated by the regular flow of weaners to the works.
As a result of the deer-finishing operation, the performance of his sheep flock has improved.
His prime lambs last year averaged 19.2kg and returned a season average of more than $100, and he was finishing another 500 lambs each year, making a total of 3000 prime lambs off 320ha.
Before the weaner-finishing operation they averaged 16.5kg-17kg.
Another key to his management was about 120 steers which were bought in late winter as 18-month or two-year-olds, and killed from December to February.
Mr Scott said at the field day that the cattle tidied up any surplus swedes and were then used to keep grass quality high.
Traditionally, he has made money from cattle, but with the schedule falling sharply he thought that would be unlikely this year.
Wintering so many deer was costly.
Monitor farm convener Alastair Gibson said doing so could cost the Scotts $20 a head for swedes and baleage.
When they arrived on the Scott farm, the weaners were drenched and vaccinated and kept in their mobs in sheltered blocks until they adjusted to the new environment.
This year's weaners averaged 64kg liveweight when they arrived on the farm.
Last year, the average carcass weight was 56kg and returned an average price of $520.31 a head.
Mr Scott said 12ha of swedes a year were grown and were critical to successfully wintering as many animals as he did, with all but the top 25%, selected on weight, kept on swedes.
The top mob was wintered on grass and baleage and shifted every two to three days, going around the farm 1.5 times.
By July, those weaners were putting on 200gm-300gm a day and were the first to be sold prime, he said.
Mobs of 400-500 were wintered on swedes and baleage with daily shifts.
To introduce the deer to swedes, Mr Scott said they were kept in an adjacent paddock of pasture with the gate open to the first break of the crop.
He shifted the break a few times while the deer still had the pasture run-off to help them adjust, then after a few days the deer were shut on the swede crop.
They came off the swede crops in early October and were separated into mobs according to weight.
The heaviest were given the best feed.
Another key to his operation was pasture renewal, with pasture in the deer unit all less than six years old.
Mr Scott sowed a mix of Italian ryegrass, maverick gold, plantain and chicory, which he said gave him growth in late winter-early spring.
Mr Scott uses Reaction fertiliser, saying he noticed improved stock health and performance with the liquid fertiliser.
Each year, half the farm was dressed with Reaction and the other half with a mixture of solid fertiliser and lime.
Solid fertiliser was sown with winter crops, young grass and the baleage paddocks.
He said the use of liquid fertiliser was not a replacement for solid fertiliser, but to balance nutrients and trace elements.