Sheep farming is a family affair

Daniel Geleyn | Apr 07, 2021

Brothers Craig and Adam Voith, both in their 20’s, are following in their parents’ footsteps while diversifying by running a successful sheep farming operation called Sugar Hill Rideaus, in Battersea, South Frontenac.

“We bought the farm in 2012 when I was 17,” says Craig Voith, who is the main caretaker for the sheep farm.

“It was a horse boarding stable when we bought it but we changed it to sheep farming. We didn’t want to be horse boarding people, it’s not as fun as this,” he adds.

Adam, the older brother, had already joined the military when they bought the farm. He is still serving in the army and helps on a part-time basis when his career in the military allows.

“We have between 250 and 300 sheep at the moment,” says Adam Voith. “The whole flock of adults are female and we have three rams.”

Their parents, Mike and Janet Voith, have been running their own farm, Sugar Hill Farm, since 2002, where they produce black angus beef as well as some pork and maple syrup. So the boys grew up on a farm and developing the new sheep farming operation was a natural development for them. Mike and Janet provide help to their sons but it is obvious that Craig is now well in charge and loving it.

“We started with one breed of sheep called the Dorper,” says Janet. “It’s a hair sheep so you don’t have to pay to shear them.”

But they quickly realized that since their main goal was to produce meat, the Dorper was not the best-suited breed as it only produces one or two lambs a year. After some research, they found the Rideau Arcott breed was more appropriate. The Rideau Arcott was produced from a breeding program that was created in 1966 by Agriculture Canada’s Animal Research Centre in Ottawa. This breed has strong maternal traits and they typically produce twins or triplets.

“The Dorper sheep only gave 1.2 to 1.3 lambs per year. But with the Rideau Arcott, we get more like two and a half lambs per year per sheep,” says Craig Voith.

The inconvenience with the Rideau Arcott sheep is that they have to be sheared once a year.

“We have to hire someone to shear them,” says Adam Voith. “It would take us much longer to do it ourselves. The professionals can shear all our sheep in one day. It would take us weeks to do that,” he adds.

“We sell the wool to the co-op in Carleton Place but we don’t get a lot for it. It just helps recoup some of the cost of shearing them,” says Adam.

Their operation is going well enough that they are slowly expanding with the help of some automation like a recently acquired Total Mixed Rations (TMR) machine, essentially a big blender, that facilitates the preparation of the feed for their flock.

There has been an increased demand for their lamb in the last few years, especially by new Canadians which appreciate this type of meat.

But like everyone else, they have also been affected by the pandemic this past year.

“Restaurants are no longer buying our lamb,” says Janet Voith. “They cannot commit at this time.”

The other impact of the pandemic is the unreliability of the abattoirs. When there are COVID-19 outbreaks at abattoirs, they are often closed which means that the abattoirs which remain open get that much busier.

“We have to book so much more in advance now at the abattoirs,” says Janet.

As a small producer, much of their product is sold directly to consumers, thereby avoiding the middle man.

“We sell by half a lamb or a whole lamb,” says Janet Voith. “We don’t sell smaller cuts because we don’t want to become a store with staff, freezers and inventory,” she adds.

It becomes obvious while walking around the farm that these young men are loving what they do and they are rightly proud of what they have done so far. But that is not stopping them from exploring how they can improve their current operation.