Coming soon: a ranch near you
Well, maybe not. But there are Northern possibilities

NNSL (June 30/97) - Alpacas? In the NWT?

Ken Schurek, the owner of 800 of the South American llama-like beasts on a ranch near Edmonton, may have something there. The North, after all, has more potential range land than Texas.

It's not an entirely new idea, although we might be able to come with more appropriate species to domesticate.

Back in the last years of the 19th century, just as the bowhead whaling industry sputtered out due to wholesale slaughter of the Beaufort-Chuckchi population, Americans in Alaska imported a few thousand reindeer from Siberia.

Canada repeated the experiment a few decades later by buying 3,000 reindeer from the Alaskans and driving them to the Mackenzie Delta.

The idea was to replace the missing bowhead with another Northern food. Reindeer are just caribou, really. Same species, different stock. By 1980, there were 13,000 animals in the herd, according to the GNWT. Meat and antler sales contributed $300,000 to Inuvik's economy.

But the herd has dwindled since then. William Nasogaluak, the Tuktoyaktuk resident who owns it now, says he'd like to see it grow from the current level of "a few thousand" before trying to make any more money from them.

"It could be part of tourism in the area," he suggests. "We don't have to do much. Reindeer feed themselves."

Meanwhile, other Northern farmers are making a go of more conventional creatures. There's chickens, pigs, goats and cattle in Hay River, according to Territorial Farmers Association president Evellyn Coleman. And one hardy fellow reportedly tried to raise pigs in Iqaluit.

It didn't work. The pig died.

The big problem with raising animals -- other than reindeer -- in most of the NWT is feeding them. "It's not so much raising them, but the cost of bringing in feed," says Coleman.

Victor Eaton, general manager of Western Arctic Foods, also in Hay River, says there might be land to grow feed in the North, but too much of it is tied up in land claims.

That suggests an idea, though. How about a muskox ranch on Nunavut or Inuvialuit land? Muskoxen don't need much room, would be easy to tend, and their meat ("King of Beef" to the Japanese) and wool (qivit) are popular items in many parts of the world.

Eaton has an even more innovative suggestion: "Couldn't a guy cross a muskox and beef?"