RIVERS, Man. – A flock of sheep rushes to greet Clayton Robins as he steps into a corral on his family’s farm.
Robins gives one of the ewes a gentle rub under the neck while he looks at the flock.
In a nearby pasture, sheep and a few head of cattle graze together on alfalfa and grass.
Robins raises sheep, grows forages and owns purebred and commercial cattle. But to day, it’s the sheep that fire up his enthusiasm for farming.
“It’s been a great fit for our own operation,” he said. “I don’t make serious dollars, but it’s definitely enough to justify owning them.”
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Robins and his wife Rebecca own 90 ewes and plan to add another 50. They want to have 200 ewes by the spring of 2002.
With only 25,000 breeding ewes in all of Manitoba, Robins thinks there is ample room for more flocks.
Properly managed, sheep are not as labor intensive as many people suspect, he said. They are also efficient feed converters, producing more meat than cattle from an equivalent amount of feed.
“For every dollar invested in the sheep flock, I’ll make more profit than from every dollar invested in cattle. I spend a lot more money on the cattle than I do on the sheep.”
Robins is not alone in his enthusiasm for the sheep industry.
Backed by support from the Manitoba Rural Adaptation Council (MRAC), Manitoba Agriculture and the Manitoba Forage Council, the industry has embarked on a new initiative to increase the province’s sheep count.
Robins, a steering committee member for the Manitoba sheep industry initiative, thinks the number of sheep in Manitoba could comfortably be doubled.
Although prices for wool are in the doldrums, there is strong demand for the meat. Driving that demand are expanding ethnic markets for lamb and mutton in Ontario and Quebec.
John Hamerton, a sheep producer and semi-retired genetics professor, said there has already been a trend toward more sheep production in Manitoba.
Sheep herds have expanded from an average of 50 breeding ewes a decade ago to 90 ewes this year. The number of lamb buyers and feedlots in the province has also increased, said Hamerton, “and that keeps the prices reasonably competitive.”
A hindrance to the industry has been the lack of a central clearing house of information about sheep production.
One of the aims of the sheep industry initiative is to make that information more accessible.
Efforts to gather information on topics like herd and pasture management are already under way
The Manitoba government has also committed to hiring a sheep specialist for the pro-vince. The specialist will offer the kinds of extension services needed by the industry.
“We urgently need that specialist,” Hamerton said. “It brings everything together.”
The hope is that Manitoba’s sheep flock will one day become large enough to warrant a federally inspected packing plant in the province. Many of the province’s lambs go to central Canada or the United States for slaughter.
“They go out on the hoof and that is value added lost to Manitoba,” Hamerton said.
The potential for expansion in Manitoba looks fairly solid, according to Keith Levenick , a provincial farm management specialist in agriculture adaptation. The province has a good forage base and there’s already an market for the meat, he said.
“Even in Manitoba, there’s starting to be an increased local demand in the stores.”
Levenick advises anyone who’s thinking about sheep production to start small. That allows time to learn about herd and pasture management before taking on the challenge of a larger flock.
While some people make their living raising sheep, Levenick said sheep might also interest a person with a full-time job who wants to supplement their income. And it could be a good fit on farms wanting to diversify.
“It’s not a miracle cure,” he said of the sheep industry’s merits for farm diversification in Manitoba.
“It’s just one other option with potential.”
