Calving out 900 heifers is demanding work at the best of times. Factor in a nasty Saskatchewan winter without so much as a hint of a southern Alberta chinook to melt the mountains of snow in 2014, and it’s a remarkable feat for an operation in its first production cycle. Kyle Primrose, who hails from […] Read more
Heifers by the hundreds
Primrose Livestock has set up a heifer station in Saskatchewan
Building consistency into a seedstock Simmental operation
Attention to detail paired with a no-fuss production system have been behind the Adair family’s success in building consistency into its seedstock Simmental herd. The ranch maintains a 42-day breeding period and has a firm policy of culling open females and those that don’t bring in a seedstock-quality bull or heifer calf each year. Cows […] Read more
Saskatchewan’s 21-Day Calving Challenge
… a calving record book with a twist
There are three $1,000 vouchers for mineral supplement up for grabs in the Saskatchewan 21-Day Calving Challenge, but everyone is a winner year after year just by paying attention to the reproductive success of their cow herds. The simplest and most effective way to do that is to track calving distribution by counting the number […] Read more
Making headway on prion diseases
The search for answers about how BSE and other TSE prions work is still ongoing at the Alberta Prion Research Institute
As the Alberta Prion Research Institute (APRI) enters its 10th year it seems as good a time as any to look back on what has been learned and what it sees ahead in the prevention of prion diseases. Set up by the province in 2005 in response to the disaster brought down on the cattle […] Read more
Reach out with a blog
These two B.C. women explain ranch life to the world through their blog
A rancher’s vocabulary has some colourful words, and dare we say a few choice ones now and then, but “blog” isn’t usually one of them unless you’re talking with Erika Fossen and Erika Strande (Stewart). 2erikas, as they are now known around the blogging world, created “Life on a BC Cattle Ranch” and as of […] Read more
Scoring newborn calf vitality
Producers have all sorts of ways of assessing calf vigour, yet subjective evaluations can be inconsistent and some signs of distress or trauma from hard births may not be obvious. As part of her PhD research at the University of Guelph, Christine Murray developed a VIGOR scoring system to rate signs of distress in a […] Read more
Have a restful calving season
The Ross family planned for one
Calving is the year-round focus on Chad and Crystal Ross’s 800-head cow-calf operation, but when calving season actually rolls around it’s the cows’ turn to do the work. The idea of letting cows calve on their own wouldn’t have entered their minds back in 1999 when they set up their place on the Ross L-7 […] Read more
Market your health program
Considering the pull rate for bovine respiratory disease is typically 15 per cent and can be up to 70 per cent for high-risk calves, you might think there’s a digit missing from the Zoetis 0% BRD pull-rate guarantee for SelectVac Gold Plus calves. Not so, says Les Byers, manager of veterinary services for beef cattle […] Read more
Helping out the Russians
Nutritionist Barry Robinson is consulting with the largest Angus herd in the world… in Russia
How does a farm go from zero to having what is believed to be the largest Angus herd in the world with more than 250,000 head including 110,000 cows, two 45,000-head feedlots and its own packing plant, in four years? Besides a lot of money, you start by gathering a lot of know-how from international […] Read more
Young judges size up their craft
It’s an honour, not a career
Young as they may seem, today’s up-and-coming beef cattle judges bring a lot of experience to show rings. Michael Wheeler, Wheeler’s Stock Farm, Saskatoon, Sask., and Kyle Lewis, Lewis Farms, Spruce Grove, Alta., came up through a dozen or so years as 4-H and junior breed association members to judge major shows such as Canadian […] Read more
Canadian Cattlemen Presents: Depth of Field
