Saskatchewan’s largest lamb feedlot has closed its doors until the U.S. border is reopened.
Leitch Livestock will continue to act as a broker, buying and selling 1,000-1,400 lambs and goats a week to be shipped to packers in Ontario.
But with no access to the U.S. market, it makes no sense to run a large feedlot in Western Canada, said owner Roy Leitch.
“This is a sad state of affairs for everybody,” Leitch said.
He acknowledged that the decision will leave producers in “a terrible, terrible mess,” but said he had no choice.
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“As soon as the border is opened we’ll be going back in the feedlot business, but right now we don’t have any market. We have three times more product than Canadian people consume.”
The news that the feedlot, located near Craven, Sask., would be temporarily shutting down is a disappointment, but not a surprise, to the province’s sheep and lamb industry.
“It’s something we were afraid was going to happen,” said Gordon Schroeder, executive director of the Saskatchewan Sheep Development Board.
“I don’t blame him because he’s got to protect his own business, but it’s an awful blow to our industry.”
Leitch is also ceasing feeding operations at his larger facility in Brandon. Together the two lots would normally process 50,000-60,000 lambs a year.
Schroeder said sheep producers feel particularly hard done by because sheep don’t carry BSE yet have been lumped in with other ruminants in the border closure.
And because it’s such a small industry, its plight has been largely ignored by government aid packages.
“We’re getting destroyed for something we have no control over,” he said.
With no centralized feeding operations in Saskatchewan, producers are being forced to feed their lambs to slaughter weight to be moved to market.
Most producers aren’t accustomed to doing that, and that could create its own set of problems further down the marketing chain.
“Our concern is that all of a sudden we have 1,400 feeders instead of a couple, so they’re all being fed different rations and they’re all being fed different ways,” said Schroeder. “Uniformity is an issue when that kind of stuff happens.”
Lambs are getting to market, in Ontario for the most part, but are fetching prices of around 62 cents a pound, well below the $1.25 producers would normally hope for.
“There’s just no hope of making money at 62 cents,” said Schroeder.
Many of the flocks in southern Saskatchewan have been designed and bred for the heavier weights preferred by U.S. buyers. Those animals don’t finish at a light enough weight for the Canadian market, which also depresses prices.
One potential bright spot on the horizon is a plan by Sunterra Meats Ltd. to build a lamb feedlot near its packing plant at Acme, Alta.
Schroeder said that will provide a home to some Saskatchewan lambs, but it won’t nearly make up for the loss of feeding capacity within Saskatchewan.
