There is a way for farmers to help preserve rare breeds of livestock, even if they don’t want to shell out the cash to buy them.
Rare Breeds Canada offers farmers and landowners the option of becoming a host farm for cattle, sheep and horses.
Under the program, the organization places animals it owns on farms under contract, where they can be bred to build up their numbers.
White Park and Canadienne cattle, horned Dorset sheep, and Newfoundland ponies are available for interested applicants.
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Another rare horse breed, the Lac La Croix Indian pony, originally bred in the 1700s by the Ojibway tribe in the Fort Francis area of Ontario, is also available. More of a small horse than a pony, the breed stands around 13 hands high.
“They were bred to live in the bush. They are hardy and versatile and will do anything from riding to hauling, pulling, you name it,” said Rare Breeds Canada chair Jane Mullen, who lives near Castleton in southern Ontario.
“They don’t ride like a pony or have a pony mentality.”
By the early 1990s the breed was in trouble, with only four horses left in Canada.
However, Rare Breeds Canada brought it back from the precipice and now there are almost 100.
Four of them are on Leah Milligan’s McLeod Creek Farm near Gibbons, Alta. She keeps them under the host farm program and said they fit in well with her agritourism venture. Her quarter section operation hosts 8,000 visitors a year, mainly children on field trips from schools in nearby Edmonton.
She said the ponies have a pleasant disposition, are easy to work with and are good with children.
“They’re nice little horses to work with. They’ve always got their heads hanging over the fence, saying, ‘pet me, bug me.’ They’re very, very social and they integrate well in our program.”
Mullen said poultry and waterfowl had been available for host farms in the past, but they were removed because of their low cost, short lifespan and the complications involved in raising them.
“If you were going to pick up five to six cows, that’s a heck of lot different investment than five to six chickens,” she said.
“And the mortality rate of poultry and waterfowl is much higher.”
Host farms are found across the country, but Mullen said the organization needs a core of dedicated volunteers in Manitoba and Saskatchewan to manage the program in those provinces.
Ownership of the offspring from the animals is negotiated in advance, with the host farm typically allowed to keep or sell every second animal born.
Bull calves may be sold or slaughtered and the proceeds divided between the host farm and the organization. For horses, the first foal generally goes to the host farm and the next goes to Rare Breeds Canada.
“It all depends on the breed and the situation,” Mullen said.
The group is not looking for acreage dwellers seeking pretty livestock to keep the grass down, said Mullen, but exceptions could be made in special cases.
Ideally, a host farm would be a viable commercial operation that might be interested in keeping a few endangered heritage animals around to maintain the breed.
“We need people who are committed to increasing breed numbers, promoting the breed and making them viable and useful again,” she said.
“We want people who are actually going to use the animals for the purpose for which they were developed.”
Rare Breeds Canada, which depends on membership fees and volunteer labour, is also looking for corporate sponsors to help with its efforts, she said.
Supporters with deep pockets are desperately needed, she added, because over the past 50 years, livestock breeds have been going extinct at a rate of six breeds per month because of the increasing rate of specialization in agriculture.
Although the global movement has gained prominent supporters, including Prince Charles, the toughest challenge is making the general public aware that heritage breeds are disappearing at an astounding rate, she said.
“People say, ‘those breeds aren’t rare. Those are everywhere. They were on every single farm 20 or 30 years ago,'” Mullen said.
“Yes, they were. But the fact is that these once common breeds are not common anymore. They are endangered.”
Milligan, who has been breeding Shetland ponies for 25 years, said few people realize how close to the brink some types of livestock have come, even the once-ubiquitous Shetland.
“It’s insane to me that they are rare. They have under 15 female stock registered per year,” she said.
“Everyone used to have one in their backyard. It’s just another thing that’s disappearing.”
