It is an arduous trip by any standard: drive from Bowden, Alta., to Vancouver, board a commercial Lufthansa flight to Frankfurt, Germany, stop briefly before flying to Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam and then travel another 440 kilometres to Nha Trang.
Fifteen sheep arrived in Vietnam July 9.
They also made history as the first Canadian shipment of live lambs to Vietnam in what sheep producers and the federal government hope will be the first of many to that country and others in Southeast Asia.
The 10 ewes and five rams, all six-month-old Dorpers, will form a biosecure flock in Vietnam that will provide new genetics and future breeding stock to Vietnamese producers, said Lynn Tait.
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She is a veterinarian and owner of OC Flock Management, a Bowden firm that exports semen and embryos but had never shipped live lambs to Vietnam until last week.
“It was a tense weekend, I’ll tell you,” Tait said July 9, after learning the sheep were alive and well in their new location at a Vietnamese government research centre.
The small number in this shipment was designed to test the system and work out any problems with transit and sheep acclimatization before shipping larger numbers.
“If we can get all the bugs worked out in this one … the larger shipment for the nuclear herd establishment is planned for about 18 months from now,” said Tait.
That is likely to include about 100 sheep, 100 dairy goats and possibly Boer goats. To reduce shipping costs, Tait is hoping a planned export of Holstein dairy cows will allow all exporters to charter a flight and reduce costs, but that remains to be seen.
Rick McRonald, executive director of the Canadian Livestock Genetics Association, said the 15 lambs have opened the door to more livestock exports.
“We know that the demand is there. We know that they (the Vietnamese) are investing in the development of their sheep and goat and cattle industries. We certainly believe that it is just the beginning,” said McRonald.
“We look on it as significant not only for Vietnam, which is quite enough, but for the region. There’s lots of interest in all of Southeast Asia in small ruminant genetics.”
In announcing the sheep shipment, federal agriculture minister Gerry Ritz said it represents new market access obtained by the government last August.
Canada has never had health certificate agreements with Vietnam, but any hope of livestock exports was halted by the BSE crisis of 2003 that also affected sheep and goats. Concerns about scrapie were also an issue, said McRonald.
He estimated that negotiations between the Vietnamese government, Ottawa and the livestock in-dustry took about six years.
