Canadian hog numbers shrank slightly last year for the second consecutive year, Statistics Canada reported last week.
There are 13.9 million hogs in Canada, the bulk of them in Quebec, Ontario and Manitoba, which together hold about 80 percent of the total. On the Prairies, Manitoba has 3.3 million hogs, down slightly from the previous year. Alberta has 1.5 million, up slightly from 2018 and Saskatchewan has 965,000, which is 20,000 more than it had in 2018, according to StatsCan. British Columbia has 87,000, up from 85,000 in 2018.
Exports in the second half of 2019 saw 2.5 million hogs exported, down by 1.4 percent from the same period of 2018.
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“Lower exports were partly attributable to high levels of hog inventories in the United States,” said StatsCan. “The 2019 United States pig crop was the largest since 1970. Canada exported 5.1 million hogs in 2019, down 2.8 percent from 2018 and down 49 percent from the 2007 export peak.”
Hog slaughter increased in the latter half of 2019, up 2.4 percent to 11 million animals and likely due to an increase in average price.
Though hogs were affected by a Chinese ban on Canadian pork for part of the year, higher sales to Japan offset those effects, StatsCan said.
The sheep and lamb inventory for 2019 showed a decline of four percent to 802,300 head. The largest sheep and lamb inventory was recorded in January of 2004 and today’s numbers are 19.3 percent below that peak.
Ontario and Quebec have over half of the nation’s sheep. The Ontario herd is 257,000 and Quebec has 182,000. Alberta is third in the country in terms of sheep and lamb numbers at 134,000 head. Elsewhere on the Prairies, Saskatchewan has 78,000 and Manitoba has 83,000, according to StatsCan figures.
In Canada the number of ewes is down 4.7 percent compared to the previous year, at 491,300 head and there are 5.5 percent fewer replacement ewes, now totalling 74,900. Rams were also down by slightly less than one percent, totalling 23,300 head.
“International exports of sheep rose to 7,500 head in the last six months of 2019, the highest level since the first half of 2016,” said StatsCan.
“The July-to-December average price of Canadian slaughter lambs was lower in 2019 compared with the same period in 2018.”
