Harper Government Invests in Canadian Swine Genetics

Sep 13, 2012

Canadian Swine Exporters Association Gets a Boost

By Author Bio Tags: Amanda Brodhagen, Farms.com

It’s been a tough year for Canadian hog producers, but a government announcement made today by Dave MacKenzie, Member of Parliament (Oxford) on behalf of Agriculture Minister Gerry Ritz brought some excitement for the Canadian Swine Exporters Association (CSEA). The government is investing close to $900,000 to assist in getting Canada’s superior swine genetics on the world stage.

"Our Government's top priority remains the economy, and Canada's swine producers play a key role in creating jobs and prosperity for Canadian farm families," said MP MacKenzie. "This investment will help our swine export industry showcase top-quality Canadian genetics around the world, helping them capture new markets and increase profits for our pork producers."

The investment will equip CSEA members to bring more awareness to Canadian swine genetics through both trade shows and some trade missions. Today, Canada is the global leader for swine genetic attributes such as meat quality, feed efficiency and biosecurity.

The announcement was made possible through the AgriMarketing Program under the Growing Forward framework that seeks to assist the agriculture industry with international strategies and marketing.

Video: Cleaning Sheep Barns & Setting Up Chutes

Indoor sheep farming in winter at pre-lambing time requires that, at Ewetopia Farms, we need to clean out the barns and manure in order to keep the sheep pens clean, dry and fresh for the pregnant ewes to stay healthy while indoors in confinement. In today’s vlog, we put fresh bedding into all of the barns and we remove manure from the first groups of ewes due to lamb so that they are all ready for lambs being born in the next few days. Also, in preparation for lambing, we moved one of the sorting chutes to the Coveralls with the replacement ewe lambs. This allows us to do sorting and vaccines more easily with them while the barnyard is snow covered and hard to move sheep safely around in. Additionally, it frees up space for the second groups of pregnant ewes where the chute was initially.