Authorities to boost black belly sheep production

The Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Nutritional Security is hoping to have a million Barbados Black Belly sheep within the next five years.

This was revealed today by Minister Indar Weir who said Barbados was working closely with Guyana to achieve its goal as it looks to significantly increase production of the domestic breed.

“We are currently working in collaboration with Guyana and the Minister of Agriculture and his team for us to determine how we are going to approach getting a million heads in five years as the target that was set by the Prime Minister.

“The paperwork that is being done on that will tell us exactly how we are going to reach the target in that deadline. They are doing the numbers, they are also looking at the lands that they would allocate in order for us to be able to do a rapid expansion programme,” Weir said before the Standing Finance Committee on the Appropriation Bill, 2022.

Chief Agricultural Officer, Keeley Holder disclosed that the ministry would be embarking on a breeding programme to help develop more offspring with the desired characteristics to allow farmers to have a profitable industry.

“In the past, the problem with the Barbados Black Belly sheep was that the size of the carcass was very small so the profitability was not there and so we are embarking on a selective breeding programme to focus on creating a set of animals and offspring that would be able to have good growth rates when you put them in a feedlot type of setting,” Holder said.

Dr Leroy McClean, who is responsible for the Barbados Black Belly sheep programme, said he believed it was a potentially lucrative and successful market.

He said farmers had shown “substantial interest” in the programme and a willingness to take part.

He said to date they had identified 273 farmers who owned 10 701 Barbados Black Belly Sheep. (RB)