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McDermit Ranch is a family-run, 320 acre sheep ranch, owned and operated by Randy and Jelaine McDermit.

It is located in south-central Saskatchewan, Canada, in the beautiful, gently rolling area of Loon Creek.  It is northeast of the little town of Southey, which is about 38 miles north of the city of Regina.  The soil is a sandy loam and some of the ranch is dotted with small poplar bushes and sloughs.

We have been raising sheep since 1985. We raise purebred and commercial Dorsets and grow grass/alfalfa hay which is all fed to the sheep.

Randy works full time in Regina, so Jelaine runs the day-to-day operations of the ranch.

 

Brief History
Shortly after we got married in 1985, while living at Rocky Mountain House, Alberta, we bought our first 25 registered Columbia ewes and we named our farm “West Country Columbias”.  Our three sons arrived in the next few years; Logan in 1987, Nolan in 1988 and Carson in 1989.  Our sheep flock numbers fluctuated over the years as we moved several times due to Randy’s job transfers in Alberta.  In the 90′s, we added Rambouillet sheep, Quarter Horses and Boer goats to the operation so we changed our name to “West Country Stock Farm”.

In 1999, Randy’s job took him to Regina, Saskatchewan and he commuted back and forth 7 hours on weekends to Picture Butte, Alberta, until we moved to a farm near Southey, Saskatchewan in July of 2000.  Unfortunately, our house burned down in January 2002, so instead of rebuilding, we sold that place and bought this ranch in June 2002.  Since we no longer live in the “west”, we renamed our operation to “McDermit Ranch”.

When a cow in Alberta was found to have BSE (Mad Cow Disease) in May 2003, the United States border was closed to all Canadian ruminants and our only lamb market was in Canada.  We saw the need to switch from the big-framed Columbia sheep to an animal with a smaller carcass.  This is because the Canadian lamb market favors smaller cuts of lamb.  We liked the attributes and the looks of Polled Dorsets, so we bought our first 50 registered Dorset ewes from Gordon Fulton (Edymore Dorsets) from Bowden, Alberta in May of 2007.  Two flock sires came with the flock – Green Glen 12N and Moonshine 82R.

DORSET SHEEP

We chose Dorsets for their out of season breeding, ease of lambing, excellent mothering & milking ability, prolificacy, docility, longevity and easy keeping.  They also do an excellent job of lambing on pasture.  They are a breed that will adjust to either a grazing or confinement program.  The lambs are vigorous, fast growing and are good feed converters.

Our Goals
Our goals are to produce for ourselves and our customers, top quality breeding stock and market lambs.  Our purebreds are kept for replacements only if they conform to the breed standards.  Our Dorsets are the old style; low set and thickly muscled.  Good conformation and productivity is very important to us.

Our Program
Our ranch is a grass and forage based, low input operation where we feed very little grain to the ewes.  We believe sheep should be productive without being grain fed.  We select for low maintenance ewes that can raise their lambs and stay in good shape.

We lamb out about seventy five purebred Dorset ewes in January.  Their lambs are creep fed until the grass comes in the spring.  The next group of ewes lamb in March and their lambs are sold in early fall. We sell the top ram lambs for breeding rams and the rest go to market.  Most of the commercial ewe lambs are sold for replacements.

We use 3 to 6 different sires on our purebred Dorset flock.  Shearing takes place in May by professional shearers.

The flock is fed salt and mineral free choice year round.  We deworm as needed and vaccinate with Glanvac 6.  We use a rotational pasture grazing system which helps to keep parasites at a minimum.  We rarely trim feet because we feed very little grain to our ewes.  Our soil is a bit sandy so the their hooves also wear off by walking.

At birth, all of the lambs are tagged with an RFID tag and their life records are recorded with the Farmworks program by Shearwell.  We use these computer records as a management tool for determining the best replacements and breeding stock offered for sale.

The flock is protected by 5 Great Pyrenees and Maremma livestock guardian dogs.

In 2018, we became members of Genovis.

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Member of the Canadian Sheep Breeders’ Association

Member of the Saskatchewan Sheep Breeders’ Association