Can anyone help?

[roly]

Hello,

Rolly here, as some of you may know, I'm buying a farm in Manitoba, I have been back and forward 6 times in the last couple of years and the last time the car hire cost me $1,700.00 for a couple of weeks. This time I am going to be in Canada for 3 - 4 weeks and intend buying a truck when I land in Calgery which I will use on the farm anyway. The help I need is - does anyone in Alberta live close to Calgery, where I would be able to park my truck a week or so at a time? Of course I don't mind paying. If anyone can help, please let me know, it will help me out a lot.

Roly

[WoolyBear]

Which part of MB are you headed to?

[roly]

Hello Woolybear
Pine River I hop I haven't closed the deal yet
I am a Suffolk man in the UK are they a good sheep to keep in Canada

Roly

[WoolyBear]

They sure are Roly........ About 1/2 of our ewes have some Suffolk influence it there. Another breed that you might be aware of is the Clun Forest. Thats working nice in our ewe lambs, expecially when crossed with a suffolk. We also have a Rideau Arcott ram thats throwing some neat lambs. This is a composite breed of several breeds that our goverment created in Ontario. Suppose to give you 250% or better lambing if you dare to do them as PB. When crossed with our dorset ewes this year we average 210%........ these ewe lambs will also continue to breed out of season here in Canada which should mean some lambs for the Christmas market, which would be easier to do than with Suffolks.

Know the Pine River area...... what are you going to use for a guardian Animal?

[roly]

Hello Woolybear,

Can you tell me where you are farming? I haven't thought of a guardian animal yet, what about a dog? How many ewes are you running? Do you think it is possible to make a living off sheep in Canada? Over here you can market lambs anywhere, from what I gather Canadian lamb has got to go to Ontario, does this make it viable? How long are your ewes out grazing? o you bring them in during winter?

Sorry to ask so many questions, but I have a lot to learn about the different farming.

Thanks,

Roly.

Ro.Land Suffolks

[jensend]

roly if you send me an e-mail i can put you in contact with some other british who are running sheep as their major enterprise here.

jensend@imagewireless.ca

[cakadu]

Roly, you are asking great questions. One of the things that I would ask you is what are your plans for marketing the lamb? Are you going to direct market i.e. do the selling and deliveries yourself or are you going to go the commercial route where you sell them to a feedlot which then further processes them?

Bear in mind that much of our lamb went to the US and while boxed, boneless (I think the requirement is still boneless but somebody can correct me here) lamb can go across, live lambs cannot which has created some major headaches for lamb producers. It has been a long hard haul and just as in beef, some lamb producers are out because things just aren't viable anymore. Realistically, whether or not you make a profit will be based on the management system that you choose, when you want to lamb (which will determine what type of facilities you need to have) and most importantly what your end user will want and what they are willing to pay.

The lamb industry has been held just as captive by a handful of processors, just as the beef industry has. In Alberta, there is only one federal processing facility for lamb and the kill costs there are quite high for custom work, if they will do it for you. The plant is (or will be very shortly) processing cull cows - about 300 per day I believe it is.
I don't know if there is a federal processor in Saskatchewan or Manitoba, but the reason most of the lamb goes to Ontario and to Quebec to some extent is because there are far bigger ethnic populations there than out here in the West. Vancouver has a fairly significant ethnic population, so lambs do go out that way as well - but more often than not, they go live and not as processed lamb.

I have no doubt that things will one day open up again in terms of lamb prices and markets. We need to find alternative markets to the US, just as the beef guys do. Canada tends to be a nation of beef eaters, particularly here in the West and for sure in Alberta, so increasing lamb consumption is an ongoing challenge. Inroads are being made with lamb and there is more domestic consumption, but the fact that cheap imports are allowed in with no tariff (or next to none) doesn't help us either. Many have spent years promoting the domestically grown lamb being superior to the imported stuff. Having said that there are ways to make money growing lamb and there are producers doing it. The first step is figuring out who you want your market to be and then giving them what they want at a price that makes sense for you and your operation.

As far as livestock guardian dogs go, there are several breeds to choose from - Maremma, Kuvasz, Great Pyrenees, Anatolian Shepherd, Kommondor all with their specific traits and qualities. The main thing is that the animals be raised with whatever it is that they are going to bond with i.e. pups born and in with the sheep, with the level of socialization determined by you. One of our Maremma's is very aloof and will stay with the sheep at all times. He will wag his tail when he sees us, but keeps a respectful distance away, just as the sheep do. The other dog will come right to the house and will let us pet her, but will generally stay out with the sheep as well.

[dferguson]

Cakadu,I have some questions re Maremma guard dogs. Hope you don't mind helping me out. For starters, ho0w long do they usually live? Some big dogs don't get very old, as in a St. Bernard I had died when she was seven. Do you raise pups? Or know someone who does? How would you go about introducing a pup to an established pair of older males? Enough for now I guess. Thanks in advance.

[cakadu]

I'd be happy to help as much as I can. We don't raise pups, but I do know of a couple of breeders - where about do you live?

Our original Maremma is going on 12 - we got him in the fall of 1993. He is slower than what he was and is getting somewhat hard of hearing, but I'm told he still goes out and patrols his area and does a pretty good job. When we were first looking for them, we found a breeder who had the dogs xrayed and they were clear. As an aside, the vet told us afterwards that it can skip a generation, but it seems to have worked with him.

Our neighbor's dog has had hip problems for a good number of years, but he still does his job.

I don't have too much experience with introducing a puppy to older dogs so I'm not sure the best way to go about that. Our original Maremma was only 6 weeks old when we first got him - his mother weaned early - and the 2 we have now we got when one was about 2 and the other 18 months. The reason we went with older dogs is because we needed the experience right away due to the coyote population getting out of hand. The coyotes were beginning to like lamb on the menu just a little too much for our liking.

I don't have the Maremma Association's contact information handy, but I will look for it and post it here if I find it. They have a wealth of information on these dogs.

I'll also see if I can't find some information on how to get the old with the new.

If you have any other questions, please feel free to ask.