Andrew McClelland
The Advocate

For anyone not involved in agriculture, the words “family farm” often bring up images of a simple life with a few hens and cows and picturesque buildings on the homestead.

But farm families, like the Egans in the town of Low, north of Wakefield in the Gatineau hills, know that running a family farm is a tough business that constantly requires innovation.

“We try to run a very tight ship,” said 20-year-old Ory Egan. “We take genetics seriously and do our research on our bulls and stallions to ensure we get the best quality offspring.”

It’s a statement Egan — who represents the sixth generation to farm his family’s land in the Outaouais region — makes with pride. 

Any visitor to “Egan Home Farms” will see a lot of Simmental cattle. The family calves 180 a year, keeping full blood Simmentals, commercial Simmentals as well as F1 females crossed between Simmental and Red Angus.

The family – including Ory’s father, Kelvin Egan; grandmother, Leith Egan; mother, Christina Thompson; and sister, Kendall Egan – takes genetics very seriously, working together on the cattle herd along with keeping 20 Percheron draft horses.

“Growing up on the farm was great. I’ve always enjoyed the horses and cattle,” Egan said.

“I remember leading one of our draft horses across the yard with my dad beside me. The mare looked gigantic since I was so small, and I really thought it was crazy how I was able to walk with such a big animal who was so calm and nice.”

Life on the Egan farm was full of hard work and fun: going on sleigh rides, feeding horses and cows, calving cows, foaling mares and working on equipment in the winters. Summers were spent in the hay fields, or moving mares and cows to different pastures, and going to horse shows.

When high school graduation came about, it didn’t take long for Egan to decided that enrolling at Macdonald Campus of McGill University in Ste. Anne de Bellevue was the right thing to do.

“I thought it was important to continue schooling in agriculture, since it would allow me to improve on my strengths and weaknesses,” Egan said. “As we’re focused on livestock at my family farm, cropping was one of the main things I wanted to learn about.”

And learn he did in Mac’s Farm Management and Technology program. Enrolling in the fall of 2021, Egan benefited from the program’s internship component by going to work on a whole different scale of family farm, the “Anchor D Ranch, run by the Skeels family of Rimbey, Alberta.

“It was just a great experience,” he said. “They’re one of the best Simmental breeders.”

“My boss, Dan Skeels, took me in for the summer and treated me as if I was a part of their family,” he added.

Egan stayed out West for 13 weeks, liking it so much that he extended his trip to join the family for a cattle show and getting a chance to travel to British Columbia and see the Rocky Mountains.

Egan finished  the FMT program just this semester. But already he has some great ideas for the family farm in Low.

“I’d like to begin selling some of our heifers privately – both our full-blood replacement heifers and commercial replacement heifers,” he said. “I believe that we have great quality in our cows and would like to give the opportunity to them to go to other farms and show what they have to offer.

“I also think it would be a great Idea to put some focus in cropping,” he continued. “As the saying goes, you can’t put all your eggs in one basket, and we do have both cows and horses. However, I believe it wouldn’t be a bad idea to diversify even more and add crops to our farm.”

But whatever the future holds, this enterprising young farmer is grateful to have come from a family farm.

“You have more reason to be hopeful when your family already has a farm and you are able to take it over,” he said. “I feel bad for young people trying to begin farming and who are starting from scratch. Everyone knows it is not at all easy to get into, nor to be able to afford.

“I do believe that all young farmers can have a future. However, they really have to love what they’re doing. The ones with established farms will have a head start as they will have the knowledge and the capital to continue and or start out.”