The Rural Voice, 2003-08, Page 30Jay Lewis stands overlooking his modern Iamb
feeding facilty that holds up to 2,400 Iambs.
Mass production hits
the sheep business
Jag Lewis turns out 18,000 to 20,000 finished
lambs a gear through his Holstein -area feedlot.
Story and photos by Keith Roulston
Three generations of the Lewis
family have been involved in
the sheep industry but 30 -year-
old Jay is taking the business in a
direction not seen in Ontario with
this Iamb finishing feedlot that sends
18,000 to 20,000 Iambs to market a
year.
Jay and his wife Penny work
together with his brother Anson and
their father Don in a sprawling co-
operative family operation that
includes livestock and a 3,000 -acre
crop -growing operation near
Holstein. Jay's part of the operation,
the Iamb -finishing business, could be
leading the Ontario Iamb industry in
a new direction from the homier
lambing -to -market approach
traditional among the province's
more than 4,000 sheep producers.
26 THE RURAL VOICE
The family is well acquainted with
that tradition. Jay's grandfather kept
sheep but had to get out of them
because of wolves. Don got back into
sheep in 1985. After 28 years in the
business, he now has a 500 -ewe
flock. The feeding idea was his.
"This is what he wanted to do,"
Jay says, surveying the feedlot below
from the viewing gallery above the
pens in the barn where there are
1,600 to 2,400 lambs at any one time,
brought in mostly from Manitoba and
Saskatchewan.
The Iambs enter the barn at 60-
100 pounds and are kept 30-60 days
to grow them to the weight desired
by the market. That starting weight
depends on what the price is and
what seems to offer the most profit,
Lewis says.
Lewis isn't worried about
choosing a particular breed of lamb.
"A live Iamb is a good lamb," he
says.
The concept of finishing lambs
had been pioneered in an old bank
barn. "We were going along and we
got to the point where we had to
grow because our market had grown.
We couldn't meet the demand
anymore. Out of the old barn we did
10,000 lambs one year and it was too
much for us so we had to change
facilities to grow with the market
demand."
The new barn, which came into
production in September 2001, was
self designed. "When we went to
build the barn we couldn't really find
what we were looking for in anybody
else's place," Lewis says. "So we
kind of took what did work and what
we thought would work, and put it it
on paper. My uncle's an engineer and
he and I designed the barn together."
It has a simple layout with six
long pens that extend from a passage
way at the back of the barn out
through an open side to a feeding
area outside. There are no cement
partitions and nothing bolted down.
"If tomorrow morning the sheep
industry goes bad, and I decide that