Stead, Manitoba is not the easiest place to operate a cow-calf operation. The highly forested landscape requires extensive land clearing before grazing cattle, and even then you might not have the pristine grasslands one might see in cattle country. Both early and late frosts are common and there are never-ending bugs that drive cattle nuts.
But the human spirit prevails. Since 2014, Laura Plett and her husband Ryan have been growing their commercial “Black Angus cattle with a Hereford influence” herd, feeding them in both forested areas and on pasture her family has cleared over generations.
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The harsh nature of their environment has always required the Pletts to be inventive, but they were still in need of some management tools to help them succeed when things went from bad to worse.
That’s why Laura decided to apply to the 2020 edition of Cattlemen’s Young Leaders (CYL), ultimately becoming one of 16 participants. CYL is a Canadian Cattlemen’s Association mentorship program in which experienced cattle producers and others in the industry help young people ages 18 to 35 get a leg up in the cattle business.
Under the tutelage of Martin Unrau — a longtime rancher from MacGregor, Man. — the Pletts put business management practices into place that would ultimately get their operation through the drought-stricken summer of 2021. Most of these changes came down to more efficient record-keeping, which in turn helped drive key decisions.
“Throughout the year I took financial training and changed all our financial records over to an online program so they would be more accessible and useful for decision-making,” says Laura Plett.
“I updated our cattle performance records to a similar program, and both of these came in very useful in making the decisions and creating the plans that led to our survival through this drought.”
Unrau guided her towards refining their breeding decisions and setting breeding goals earlier. “I set goals as to what’s going to be the most marketable calf in the fall and making different decisions around that,” says Plett.
“I learned a lot from (Martin). It was great having him just to talk things through with. I feel like the CYL program and everything I learned was a big reason why we have come out the other side of this drought and things are still looking positive for our future.”
Bale processing optimizes feed
Sawmill Creek Livestock — where the Pletts share land with her family’s grain farm — is located in eastern Manitoba about seven miles from the southeast corner of Lake Winnipeg. True to its name, it was once home to a family logging interest, which explains in part why there’s enough cleared land to run a cow-calf operation.
“It’s more or less bush or swamp,” says Plett. “Anything that’s cleared was cleared over the past three generations or so.
“We’re not in a grassland ecosystem whatsoever. Clearing land is not an overnight thing. Technology in that area is always improving but back in the day, it’s not like you logged an area and seeded it the next year. It’s kind of a slow process.”
Plett has been building her herd slowly since she purchased her original 30 bred Black Angus heifers in 2014.
“The Angus is just the ideal mother cow in my opinion. I think it always will be. We brought the Hereford in just because this isn’t the easiest place to make a living as a cow. They brought in a little more hair, a little more feed efficiency.”
Even before the CYL program, the Pletts were always looking for ways to make their rotational grazing system more efficient. After the sum of three dry years turned out to be a 25 per cent hay shortfall in 2020, necessity became the mother of invention. In September of that year, they bought a bale processor to help them do more with less.
“The bale processor allowed us to stretch our feed supply by 25 per cent by improving the quality by making it more palatable and incorporating straw. It cost us less to purchase and operate the processor than it would have to purchase the additional hay for that one year.”
In addition to extending and improving feed, the processor also helped reduce input costs.
“We split our pastures up into four parts so we were only feeding every four days. We shred one day’s worth of hay per paddock on several paddocks so we aren’t starting the tractor every day. We just go out on foot or by snowmobile and open gates,” she says.
“With feed being our biggest expense by far, to be able to use 25 per cent less was a really big deal.”
Sheep eat what the cows won’t
In recent years the Pletts have added range sheep to get more value out of the land. In short, the sheep eat what the cows won’t: plants like willows that are otherwise just sitting there sucking moisture out of the soil.
“A lot of our pasture is bush and there’s a lot of stuff in the bush that the cows don’t eat or don’t like to eat. And that’s all the stuff that the sheep really do like to eat. So we thought if we added the sheep in here, they could clean up the stuff that the cows don’t necessarily love.”
In addition to their agronomic benefits, the sheep also act as a business risk management tool.
“We’re adding more pounds of meat off every acre we have just by the sheep eating stuff that wouldn’t be used by the cattle anyways.
“Once that’s cleaned up that makes room for better grass to grow. Then our stocking rates will go up for the cattle or the sheep, whichever way we choose to go.”
A career transition
Plett was working as a hunting and fish- ing tour guide and manager when she met Ryan, who worked in the same field. Ever since then their career transition towards full-time ranching has been a gradual pro- cess of cutting back on their guide activity while simultaneously growing the herd.
“We would be taking care of them in the winter and then the majority of them would go to the community pasture. We just had more and more every year and when we got to about 80 head or so it was just too much to be gone that much because we were growing a lot more feed. There was just a whole lot going on,” she says.
She and Ryan still get away on the occasional guiding tour but it’s usually on an individual basis while the other partner runs the ranch.
“This fall I was away for about two weeks guiding some moose hunts up north but it just gets harder and harder to get away the more you have going at home,” she says. A new addition to the family — two-year-old Dustin James — also keeps the couple home more.
“When one of (us) is gone the other’s working four times as hard trying to hold down the fort. Sometimes we try to get away and do some guiding for fun. We still love it.”
Adaptability key to growth
Like most producers, the Pletts’ ultimate goal is to expand; in their case, that means expanding both the cattle herd and sheep flock while staying light enough on their feet to adapt to changing circumstances.
“With the drought, we wound up selling some heifers just because we knew it was going to be a dry summer. We’re really thankful we had. Conditions really dictate how much we grow.”
They also want to continue rotational grazing, adding paddocks and improving the land overall.
“I’m sure the only reason we had any grass at all this past fall was due to our decisions made several years earlier. The more we improve the land the more we can expand.
“If the weather ever snaps back to normal then that would allow us to grow some, too. We have still managed to grow throughout these dry years so if we ever got some rain we’d be looking to add some more animals for sure.”
