EDMONTON Ð Prairie sheep producers are faring no better than cattle producers after a summer of grasshoppers and little rain.
Audrey Lalonde of Entwistle, Alta., brought 16 ewes to Edmonton recently for the first sheep sale of September to help the grass on her farm last over the next month.
“I’m selling two-thirds of my flock because of a lack of hay and pasture,” said Lalonde, who was carefully writing the price of lambs into her small notebook.
Prices at the sale would help her determine when the rest of her flock would be sold. Depending on how long the grass lasts, she will sell 35 or 40 more of her 87 ewes over the next few weeks.
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“They can’t eat snowballs,” Lalonde said.
The situation is no different in Saskatchewan, said Gordon Schroeder, executive director of the Saskatchewan Sheep Development Board.
A shortage of feed is forcing lambs to market earlier than normal, Schroeder said.
There is also heavy culling of flocks, he said. In some cases, entire flocks are being sold.
“A lot of good flocks are going because they can’t afford expensive feed.”
Roy Leitch of Brandon, Man., said he hasn’t seen large lots of lambs dumped on the market from feed shortages yet.
Leitch, who owns one of the largest sheep feedlots in Canada, has begun a four-week tour of Western Canada, visiting sheep sales and private flocks to buy sheep for eastern Canadian markets.
But what has hurt sheep producers as much as the feed shortage is the dramatic drop in prices.
At the recent North Central Sheep and Goat sales in Edmonton, the price of lamb dropped to 64.5 cents a pound for 95 to 115 lb. lambs from 95 cents a pound a year earlier.
“The price has just been rotten,” said Doug Laurie, who has organized the sales at Edmonton Stockyards for the past seven years.
Bob Pettie, livestock procurement manager with Canada West Foods in Innisfail, Alta., said a glut of American lamb helped force the price down.
“They’re absolutely bunged up with lamb.”
He said American packers have been full since June.
The central Alberta packer has had calls from producers as far away as Texas wanting some place to kill their lambs.
About 20,000 lambs from southern Alberta Hutterite colonies that are usually sold to the United States have been turned away because of the excess supply.
“All of a sudden we have an extra 20,000 head of Hutterite sheep we don’t normally have,” Pettie said.
Canada West Foods normally slaughters 50,000 head a year.
Pettie said he tells his customers not to expect a price jump during the busy fall run.
“We don’t experience any kind of an upturn in the market at this time of year,” he said.
Complicating the market is the trade dispute between the U.S. and New Zealand and Australia. At the end of August, the U.S. agreed to abandon an import quota on lamb meat from Australia and New Zealand effective Nov. 15.
Instead, the Americans will provide its domestic sheep industry with a $42.7 million aid package.
The U.S. has about seven million sheep and lambs. There are 118 million head in Australia and 47 million in New Zealand.
Canada has one million head of sheep and lambs.
