GRAZERIE

We bought a ranch in northern Alberta, close to the town of High Prairie. We have  480 acres of our own land and then rent pasture and hay land  (about another 600-800 acres). Our ranch is at the end of a gravel road and is a dead end road. We are surrounded by bush and forest, and are close to the Winagami Provincial Park.  Our land is only half open and the rest is bush. We have a few hundred commercial ewes and about 100 purebred and commercial red and black angus cattle.  We run between 8 and 10 Sarplaninac livestock guardian dogs and have border collies to do the stock work for us. We also have  a few cats and some horses to gather cattle with, go trail riding. 

During the summer months we let the ewes graze in the bush. We use temporary electric nets in the bush and give the sheep lots of 40-80 acres to graze. The bush is dense and we cannot just walk through it. We take the ewes out of their night corral in the morning to the bush and at night we gather them and the Sarplaninac dogs and take them back home. We feel this is the safest option as we do have large predators on our ranch. Our ranch is home to all the large predators, including bears, wolves, coyotes, lynx etc. The dogs go with the ewes between the pastures. Our dogs respect the electric fences and stay in the designated area.