Oct 18, 2024 | Sample Articles, Volume 49 - 2024
Story & Photos by Randy Eros. Above: Christian Beaudry, Marie-France Bouffard, Félix Beaudry, Lee-Anna Mahannah and David Beaudry in the finishing barn.
Marie-France Bouffard and Christian Beaudry and their family run a flock of 900 registered Rideau Arcott sheep just outside of Granby, Québec, a 45-minute drive east of Montreal. Christian grew up on the farm, which at the time was a dairy operation. The dairy quota was sold in 1990 and in 2005 Christian and Marie-France bought the farm from Mr. Beaudry. The farm is 350 acres altogether, 150 acres with the house and barns and the other 200 acres of tillable land nearby. Their adult children, Charles, David, Myriam and Félix along with David’s partner Lee-Anna Mahannah, are all involved in the farm operation.
The entire flock is purebred and registered with all of the animals enrolled in the GenOvis genetic improvement program. This adds a significant workload to an already busy operation but the results are impressive.
There are four main buildings making up the operation: the breeding/lambing barn, the feeder barn, the finishing barn and the nursery.
Above: The breeding/lambing barn, note the windows stop half way down the building.
The breeding and lambing barn was built in 2018 and is quite large at 322’ x 88’. It was designed specifically for their sheep operation. “We wanted to expand the operation and needed a better setup,” explained Marie-France. “Previously our breeding and lambing operations were in two buildings, this has brought all the ewes together in one building.” The barn is split in two 150’ sections with a 20’- wide handling area dividing the two sides. The building is fully enclosed and they use light-control to stimulate estrus. Long days of light followed by shorter days just prior to breeding. There are no windows in the light-control end of the barn.
They run an accelerated program; the flock lambs five times a year, with each ewe lambing every nine months. Ewes are bred in groups of 17 or 18. There were 13 separate breeding groups in the breeding barn at the time of my visit. Teaser rams are put in with the ewes 14 days before breeding. The rams, one per group, are left in with the ewes for 35 days. On average, 85% of the ewes will catch in the 1st cycle. That number improves when they are in-season breeding. The ewes will be scanned 40 days after the rams are removed and any open ewes are moved into the next breeding group. “We shear the ewes at the same time as we do the ultrasound scan,” said Christian. “Shorn sheep make for easier management at lambing and this way we’re handling them only once.” The ewes will also be vaccinated with Glanvac 6 at the same time. Jean-Michel Popik is their shearer.
The latest 12-month lambing data from GenOvis shows 2.7 live lambs per ewe at each lambing. The ewes are lambing 1.31 times per year and average 2.97 lambs weaned per ewe/year.
Above: The lambing barn feed alley with sections of 8″ plastic drain tile.
Above: The nursery barn, cleaned and ready for the next group of lambs.
The barn is designed so that the pens can be adjusted for size as needed. The ewes are fed through fence-line feeders along the alleyways. The head space is 9” high and they have sections of 8” plastic drainage tile sitting along the wooden rails. David explained their pen setup. “We had all the penning built to our specs, so it’s easily adjustable. We want 1.5’ of feeding space for pregnant ewes and 1.1’ once they’ve lambed. The drainage tile is easily pushed up by the ewes, allowing then to access the feed but it prevents the lambs from sneaking out of the pens.” It’s not foolproof, he said. “If the bedding gets too high a few escape artists will find their way out.”
The breeding flock is fed a TMR ration of corn silage, soya meal, dry hay and haylage. The hay fields are a mix of orchard grass, rye grass and timothy. The haylage is peas and alfalfa. For late gestation and lactation ewes the TMR is top dressed with 250g/day/head of 12% supplement and glycol for additional energy. They include 15mg/head/day of monensin in this ration.
Above: Nasal spray as a vaccination for pneumonia.
The newborn lambs will spend 24 to 48 hours in a claiming pen. The ewe will raise two lambs with the additional lambs being moved to the nursery. The lambs are tagged and docked in the claiming pen. The lambs have access to a creep feed with a purchased 19 % crumble ration. At three weeks of age the lambs receive a nasal spray that protects from pneumonia and a Glanvac 6 vaccination. The lambs that are raised with the ewes will be weaned at 50 to 60 days and moved to the feeder barn.
Above: Breeding groups in the light controlled section of the barn.
The nursery barn will see 100 to 120 lambs from each lambing. They use two Grober Milk machines, each one central to a series of small pens. David explained “We like groups of 10 to 15 lambs, the younger the lambs, the smaller the group.” The machines are cleaned daily and the building cleaned and disinfected between groups. Lambs will be weaned at 30 days or 13 kg and moved to the feeder barn. They include peat moss in the bedding for the nursery lambs. “It helps control the humidity and that means fewer problems with pneumonia.” They maintain the nursery barn temperature at 12°C during the winter. There were nods of agreement from everyone when Félix commented that the nursery barn “is where we make the most money ‘per square foot’ on the farm, we want to make sure it works.”
The lambing barn is cleaned out and disinfected after each lambing. The whole barn will get a high-pressure wash once a year to keep the interior white. They do this in the fall after the fly season is over. Proper ventilation is a big part of managing the barn. In the summer the two sections of the barn can be ventilated together with open doors. This air movement also helps control biting flies. During the winter they manage the two sections separately. “We want to keep the section where the ewes are lambing at 13° C, the rest of the flock is comfortable at 5-8° C” Christian explained. The two sections of the barn are separated by a light-trap. This is an idea they borrowed from poultry barns. It allows for the full length of the barn to be ventilated; air can pass through the wall, but not light. This means that the light-control, that is so important in the breeding program, is not affected by light leaking from one side of the barn to the other.
Above: The Agrident tag reader, the best so far.
Above: Breeding group selections for the November 2024 lambing.
Above: Ram selection data.
With the entire flock enrolled in the GenOvis program there is a lot of data to collect. Marie-France smiled when I asked about reading ear tags and entering data; “we are using Ewe Manage as our software along with an Agrident reader that works really well. We’ve spent a lot of money on readers over the years, I think we must have tried them all.”
Above: The light-trap, allowing air to travel between the sections of the barn.
The weaned lambs are moved to the 42’ X 150’ feeder barn. They are fed a free choice ration through an automatic augured feeding system. This ration is three parts whole corn and 1 part 38% supplement. The added mineral is medicated with Deccox. They also have access to 2nd cut grass hay. The average daily gain across the flock is 0.35 kgs/day. Each lambing produces a minimum of 400 lambs and the feeder barn is operating at its maximum capacity. Doubling the size of the feeder barn might be the next upgrade on the farm.
Above: The 42′ x 100′ Feeder barn with the automatic feeding system.
Lamb mortality has been a challenge over the years, running as high as 20% at one point. Vaccinating the ewes for Q-fever and the lambs for pneumonia has helped a lot. The current mortality rate is 14%, but that number includes pre-natal deaths, basically anything that can be identified as a lamb. The mortality from live birth to weaning is between five and six percent.
The lambs are separated by sex and size when they do the 100-day weights. The ultrasound scan is done on the loins and each animal will get a physical evaluation looking at teeth, teats, testicles and physical appearance. Most of the ewe lambs will either be kept as replacements or sold to other flocks. The replacement rate for their ewes is roughly 20%/year. At four months of age the ewe lambs are switched over to the standard TMR ration, top dressed with whole corn. The retained ewe lambs are bred at nine months.
The selection process for replacement rams is very strict; they are looking for genetic improvement. Christian put it “We want the best of the best.” They have 40 to 50 rams on hand and use young rams. “We will use them once or twice and then sell them.” From the last group of 225 ram lambs only 12 were kept for breeding. First, they do a visual assessment; the animal must look good. Then they review the GenOvis numbers. They are selecting animals with performance indexes above 85%. Finally, they are looking for animals that genotype RR for scrapie resistance. Rams that genotype QR will only be considered if they have very strong performance indexes. The final selection for replacement rams happens when the rams are seven to eight months old. To ensure that they are making unbiased selections they ask an outside classifier, Rejean Girard, to look at the rams and their data.
Once the rams have been added to the pool of breeding animals there is still the decision of what animals will make up the next breeding groups. Marie-France shared some of the paperwork used in creating the latest breeding groups. She has developed a colour/symbol system that allows her to carry the paper-based decisions into the barn. “Once we’ve created the groups, we mark the backs of the ewes that will be bred to that specific ram.”
Rams that aren’t kept for breeding are finished to 55 kg and sold through Québec’s heavy lamb marketing program. “We contract for 60 lambs every four weeks,” Christian explained, “We might be able to do more but you don’t want to come up short. It’s far easier to negotiate selling a few extra lambs into the market.” The market lambs are finished in a separate hoop barn located on the other side of the farmyard.
Above: The Feed cart is able to access both sides of the barn.
Above: A group of ewes bred for November lambing. Note the ‘ram’ mark on their backs.
The farm uses 260 tonnes of feed each year. They do the seeding of their soya beans and corn and the cutting, raking and tedding of the hay. “This is a very strong agricultural community with lots of farmers. We have the harvesting, manure spreading and hay all done by custom contractors. By growing the feed and mixing the TMR on farm we save $100/tonne.”
They use 700 to 800 large square bales of wheat straw each year. One of the local farmers supplies some of that through a trade. He bales straw up for them from his winter wheat harvest in exchange for manure to fertilize his fields. The straw is stored in a hoop structure that plays double duty as a shelter for ewes in early gestation. This is the only time the ewes are outdoors. They have access to a fenced pasture. Deworming is not a regular task, if it becomes necessary, they use Ivomec.
The farm has expanded beyond the sheep operation in recent years. Charles and David have partnered with their parents to establish Pépinère Abora, a 75-acre tree nursery. They already have 87,000 trees, predominantly cedar with some spruce. When fully planted the nursery will have an inventory of 160,00 trees and include Christmas tree production.
Though life centers around the farm there is a lot more going on. Agronovie was front and centre at the All Canada Sheep Classic this year. Richmond is just an hour’s drive and their participation netted them the Championship ribbon for their Rideau yearling ram.
Félix and Lee-Anna participated in an international young shepherd’s competition ‘Ovinpiades Mondial’ in France at the end of May. Representing Canada, they participated in the week-long event testing and highlighting their skills.
Above: Lee-Anna Mahannah competing in Ovinpiades Mondial in France, Photo by Ferme Agrinovie.
It is no surprise that participation and education are part of the farm life. Both Christian and Marie-France have agriculture degrees. The younger generation is bringing a new mix of skills to the operation through their educations in farm business management, animal production, and agricultural economics.
The whole family at Agronovie farm is working with their large flock of registered Rideau sheep to develop and improve the breed through genetic selection and good management. High quality sheep, combined with producer knowledge, hard work and attention to detail has created a farm that produces prime market lambs and more importantly, excellent breeding stock.
Above: Bred ewes in the outdoor paddock, they will move into the barn for lambing.
