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OCTOBER 2003 |
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A flock of 1,000 sheep are capable of grazing 10 acres of tree plantings a day, removing about 75 percent of the unwanted vegetation. For the tree grower, the alternatives to using sheep are herbicides, with their expense and environmental difficulties, or manual brush cutting, which usually means one person swinging a weed whacker to clean up about 1.2 acres a day. Montegal Creek Inc., in Bluffton, Alberta, is owned by Edworthy and her partner, Allan Neville. The company owns about 800 sheep and rents additional ones from a nearby Hutterite Colony. The flock is a mixture of Dorset, Rambouillet, and Suffolk breeds that Edworthy describes as the “perfect cutblock flock.” The breed mix is a combination of both loose and tight foraging species. Alternative To Herbicides Edworthy said she and her business partner consider themselves professional vegetation managers who also farm. “We’d be the optimum choice in areas where there are herbicide restrictions, and also in areas where herbicides haven’t worked,” she says. The company works two contracts a year, clearing 850 to 1000 acres a season for each one. The forestry grazing season starts in late May and continues through August. Sheep clear out about 15,000 acres of seedling plantings each year in British Columbia. Three shepherds drive each 1,000-head flock with the help of New Zealand Huntaway dogs and Border Collies. Between three to five guardian dogs also accompany each flock to discourage predators. “We had a wolf pack in one of our areas, so we brought extra guardian dogs for that job because those guys (wolves) can be pretty sneaky,” Edworthy recalled. “But we had no problems with them.” Healthy Flock Diseases and parasites that could be transmitted between wildlife and the domestic animals were originally their greatest concerns. An extensive health protocol has since been established. Before leaving their farm, each sheep is inspected by a certified veterinarian. Their feet undergo a zinc sulfate bath to prevent hoof rot. The company keeps daily logs on all health related incidents as well as the number of sheep, shepherds, and dogs on site. Any wildlife encounters are also recorded and reported to the local conservation officer. Health concerns have not hurt their vegetation control business at all, Edworthy said. “It’s expensive, but it has made our flocks better. They are stronger and healthier. It has resulted in better shepherds too because (now) they watch a whole lot more closely.” Manure Benefit
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A flock of 1,000 sheep also leaves about a ton of manure for each 10 acres grazed, which represents about a $25 (US) per acre free benefit to the forest company. Unlike cattle and horses that redistributed weed seeds in their manure, sheep have a digestive system that destroys any seeds they eat. While sheep perform well in evergreen stands, they are not always effective in stands with some high value deciduous trees. Shepherds have learned that it is important to keep the flock moving so evergreen seedlings don’t become a supplemental snack to the sheep’s basic preference for deciduous growth. “It was a learning experience for us and for the sheep,” Edworthy said. “On our first assignment we opened the gate, they ran down the road, and I turned them into the block. They went into this little pocket of vegetation and stayed there all day. They wouldn’t move. They didn’t know where to go. They didn’t even know the vegetation. Every log that was lying down was a fence to them.” Sheep Training The flock these days includes at least some sheep that have worked vegetation control before, so they know what to expect when they are turned out in a new block of seedlings. Newer members of the flock do what is typical of sheep...they follow. “They are broken to work a block,” Edworthy said. “They will swim a creek now if I ask them to. They wouldn’t in the beginning. They’d come across a mud puddle on the road, and the entire 1,000 head would stop dead. You’d have to go and drag them across. It was just a nightmare. And bridges...they’d look at a bridge and wouldn’t go across.” Shepherds use command whistles and hand signals to instruct the trained Border Collies and Huntaways on where the flock should be directed. During the off-season, Edworthy trains her herding dogs to respond properly to signals. Don’t Eat The Evergreens “When the sheep bed down in an area, we’re watching that really closely,” she said. “We get them up before they want to get up themselves and get them started again so they don’t start to chew on just anything around them. If they are doing damage, then we will put them onto a road or a landing for bedding down. We try to gauge it so that by the time they are ready for bed time, we’re swinging around and getting close to a road. Then we will put them up on the road and keep them there until they are rested.” The use of sheep for vegetation control may not be widespread, but it does have advantages over more conventional controls. “What we’ve found in the US has been that where sheep grazing is appropriate, it is less expensive than the other alternatives, those being herbicides and mechanical vegetation control,” says Oregon State University professor Steven Sharrow, “providing that you have a fairly efficient system to begin with.” Sheep use is cheaper than herbicides, he explained, particularly when you factor in the potential litigation costs associated with herbicide usage.
Improving Wildlife Habitat Sharrow works for Oregon State University’s Department of Rangeland Resources, and has been researching the use of sheep for vegetation control since 1980. That is when the United States Forest Service launched a program to use sheep to control vegetation in Oregon’s national forests. The objective was to use sheep to remove rank grass in order to improve elk habitat. Second growth vegetation is much more nutrient rich. It wasn’t the first time that Oregon used sheep for wildlife enhancement. In the 1940’s, they were used in similar fashion on public lands to help improve the overall health of the blacktail deer population. The results back then were extremely positive, as the deer population experienced significant population growth, weight gain, and much better health due to a much improved food source. Sheep usage is common practice in north central British Columbia, Canada, but remains a largely underutilized tool in other similar forested regions. Sharrow says the shift in forest harvesting in the American Northwest from public to private land holdings since the mid-1980’s and continued extensive herbicide use on private plantations has discouraged sheep usage for vegetation control on a large scale. Only about six percent of the timber harvested in Oregon is currently on public lands, even though the Oregon sheep vegetation control model has proven successful in Canada. Montegal Creek’s flock is keeping a lot of other people employed because of its vegetation control activities. These include abattoirs, livestock truck drivers, and feed mill owners. “This is a live tool,” Edworthy said. “It’s not just a weed whacker that can be put in a shed and locked up for the winter. These sheep need attention year-round.” For more information: www.for.gov.bc.ca/hfp/forsite/sheep/index.htm. |
