EDMONTON — Everything Tom Makowecki knows about sheep he learned from pigeons.
It may seem like a strange connection, but Makowecki said he learned at a young age how to tell if one of his homing pigeons was sick by the way it stood or the look in its eye.
He applies the same animal husbandry to his Romanov sheep. By walking through the flock, he can tell if one is likely to lamb soon or is off its feed.
“Pigeons taught me to notice the little things,” he said.
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“The biggest thing is observing, having an eye for it.”
“You can save a lot of time by knowing what’s going on.”
Makowecki wanted to be a farmer when he was small, but was limited in the choice of animals he could keep in the backyard.
“Growing up in the city, pigeons were the only form of livestock I could keep and enjoy,” Makowecki said from his quarter section farm northeast of Edmonton.
Now, Tom and Nelda are among the few farmers who make their living solely by raising sheep.
“For us, there’s absolutely nothing else we do for an income,” he said.
The couple raises Romanovs, a fertile Russian breed introduced to Canada from France 20 years ago.
In 1980, the Canadian government imported 14 ewes and four rams from France for testing. After five years of quarantine, 14 groups were sold by tender.
Makowecki borrowed $7,000 to buy a group of 10 in the original tender sale.
At the time, he was searching for some way to make a living farming. He had subscribed to Sheep Canada magazine and was inspired by an article written by the geneticists who imported the sheep.
“We’ve probably had 13,000 lambs since 1986 when we started with 10,” Makowecki said.
Unlike other breeds that only breed at a certain time of year, Romanov are aseasonal breeders with an ability to breed year round.
For the first 12 years, the Makoweckis’ sheep lambed every eight months. They have since pushed their breeding program so the ewes lamb twice a year in January-February and August-September.
“Their strength is in numbers. Yield over expenses.”
He said lambing twice a year guarantees him income throughout the year.
“The first lambs go to pay for the ewes and the other expenses. The rest is gravy. The other two are for us.”
The 200 ewes produce about 800 lambs a year. Each ewe produces two to four lambs twice a year. Last year about 65 percent of the sheep had two lamb crops.
The ewes are allowed to raise two of the lambs during each lambing. The others are immediately removed from their mothers and raised by hand. This spring, 200 of the farm’s 500 lambs were raised by hand in the orphanage, where they were fed cold colostrum from nipple buckets to prevent them from drinking too much milk.
At 21 days, the lambs are weaned from milk replacer. A week later they are returned to the corral.
The death loss in the orphanage is less than five percent. For the past 10 years Makowecki has averaged less than 10 percent death loss over the entire herd.
“Once they’re alive, they’re tough.”
The lambs that stay with their mothers are put in a small pen with the ewe to mother up. They’re then put in a larger pen with a few other ewes and newborns before being returned to the main flock.
The lambs are born with a fine black hair. At about two months they grow a mixture of black and white wool fibres.
The Romanov is a hair sheep with little market for its wool. The Makoweckis use the wool from their ewes as inexpensive insulation for their barns.
The lambs are kept until they’re about five or six months old and then sold to prairie feedlots.
“Just to keep it simple, we sell to one buyer and they’re gone and out of our hair.”
