Pam Bartlett believes strongly in her sheep program

Nov 14, 2022

Pamela Bartlett grew up on a mixed farm, which included purebred Charolais cattle and grain.

Bartlett joined the local 4-H club at the age of six and remained a member until she was 18 years old and will receive her 20-year leader pin in 2023. The 4-H movement has always been a passion for her family.

For a few years, while being a 4-H member, Bartlett took a sheep project, not realizing how much this would impact her adult life.

Bartlett is the treasurer for the Saskatchewan Sheep Breeders Association and the sheep leader of her club. She works full-time as the chief administrative officer for the RM of Enniskillen, while her husband Daniel works for Centurion Canada Infrastructure and is a firefighter for Carnduff’s fire department.

They moved to their family farm in 2011 with their son Eli. In 2013, they had their daughter Abigail.

Initially, the young farm family bought a small herd of black angus cows. This proved not to be for them due to some medical issues, so the search began for something manageable for their family, and it was decided to be sheep.

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Video: US Soy: Pig growth is impaired by soybean meal displacement in the diet

Eric van Heugten, PhD, professor and swine extension specialist at North Carolina State University, recently spoke at the Iowa Swine Day Pre-Conference Symposium, titled Soybean Meal 360°: Expanding our horizons through discoveries and field-proven feeding strategies for improving pork production. The event was sponsored by Iowa State University and U.S. Soy.

Soybean meal offers pig producers a high-value proposition. It’s a high-quality protein source, providing essential and non-essential amino acids to the pig that are highly digestible and palatable. Studies now show that soybean meal provides higher net energy than current National Research Council (NRC) requirements. Plus, soybean meal offers health benefits such as isoflavones and antioxidants as well as benefits with respiratory diseases such as porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome (PRRS).

One of several ingredients that compete with the inclusion of soybean meal in pig diets is dried distillers grains with solubles (DDGS).

“With DDGS, we typically see more variable responses because of the quality differences depending on which plant it comes from,” said Dr. van Heugten. “At very high levels, we often see a reduction in performance especially with feed intake which can have negative consequences on pig performance, especially in the summer months when feed intake is already low and gaining weight is at a premium to get them to market.”

Over the last few decades, the industry has also seen the increased inclusion of crystalline amino acids in pig diets.

“We started with lysine at about 3 lbs. per ton in the diet, and then we added methionine and threonine to go to 6 to 8 lbs. per ton,” he said. “Now we have tryptophan, isoleucine and valine and can go to 12 to 15 lbs. per ton. All of these, when price competitive, are formulated into the diet and are displacing soybean meal which also removes the potential health benefits that soybean meal provides.”