LETHBRIDGE, Alta. – Dwindling research funding has one animal scientist worried that sheep research will be the next casualty of government cutbacks.
Kim Stanford, an Alberta Agriculture sheep researcher working at Agriculture Canada’s Lethbridge Research Centre, has put her projects on hold until a new agreement can be negotiated by industry and government to maintain research.
When Agriculture Canada stopped funding sheep research in 1995, provinces like Quebec and Ontario set up their own programs. The West has struggled to find dollars to keep its own programs alive.
Read Also
VIDEO: British company Antler Bio brings epigenetics to dairy farms
British company Antler Bio is bringing epigenetics to dairy farms using blood tests help tie how management is meeting the genetic potential of the animals.
“There isn’t a lot of government support even for extension in Western Canada,” Stanford said.
The Lethbridge centre maintains a 400-ewe flock. When the sheep program was terminated, Stanford continued to work with the federally owned sheep on the understanding that the province and industry would pick up the costs, said Steve Morgan Jones, director of the Lethbridge research centre.
Negotiations will take place over the next few months, he said.
Commodity groups have supported research but dollars are short. The Alberta Sheep and Wool Commission collects $1 on every animal sold. Four percent of the checkoff goes to research.
The president of the commission said producers are negotiating with the governments of the western provinces to form a centralized research program that could be based in Lethbridge.
“It’s tough for one province to support it,” said Gordon Fulton of Bowden, Alta.
Lethbridge is a logical choice as research base because it has an established flock, a nutrition program and expertise on staff, he said.
In the meantime, Stanford is not starting any new projects until she knows the future of sheep research for Alberta Agriculture.
“Everything might collapse quite quickly,” she said.
She works exclusively with sheep and goats and if the program is ended, the flock would likely be maintained as ruminant models in bovine nutritional research.
Sheep research projects at the Lethbridge centre are varied.
There is an ewe lamb project to measure quantity and quality of milk.
A sheep composting program started in 1996 to address the problem of disposing of mature dead animals. Renderers won’t accept dead sheep because of concerns over scrapie and diseases that may be transmitted to other species. It is believed bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or mad cow disease, was transmitted to cattle by feeding them ground-up sheep remains.
