If there had been a cattle producer’s “word of the year” for 2021, it likely would have been “drought.”
Beef producers across the Prairies probably muttered that word daily and vexed about the situation hourly. The condition it describes is inescapable, but just how did producers deal with it?
Feed – and water
Read Also
Body condition, nutrition and vaccination for brood cows
One of the remarkable events of the past century related to ranching has been the genetic evolution of brood cows….
Peter Schwenk, together with his family, owns and operates a smaller feedlot near Coronation, Alta. While he may not have predicted the drought situation 18 months ago, he was ready for tougher times.
“I had extra feed from a year ago, plus I had extra water stored in dugouts,” he notes. Schwenk suggests many producers could face water shortages because they often worry just about feed supplies.
The Schwenks feed and finish calves, which they either raise themselves or buy in the fall. Because he regularly carries over feed from the previous years, he’s not overly concerned about his situation. “I’ll have enough to get through all right,” he says. “I won’t have extra though.”
If the spring rains deliver, Schwenk will again make extra silage this summer to anticipate a future drought. “I’m not into doom and gloom, but I do want to plan ahead. The dry year has forced us to use our resources carefully.”
Sellers may profit
Hazel George’s drought dilemma was not one of shortage. A few years ago, she sold her 30 commercial cows to a neighbour. Now, at her ranch south of Irricana, Alta., she offers up hay for sale.
In late July 2021, she sold her inventory to her usual customers at what she believed was a solid price of $100 per 1,350-lb. round bale. Within a few months, she could have doubled her prices, even to $250 per bale, she says.
That compares to two years ago when moisture was plentiful and hay was abundant. George recalls selling 400 round bales at a discounted price of $50 each just to get them off the yard.
Large-scale headaches
Brett DeBruycker and three of his siblings run the largest purebred Charolais herd in the world at Dutton, Montana. They calve out 2,200 registered Charolais females annually. Last April, they auctioned off 690 purebred bulls in their April 2021 sale, held just north of Great Falls.
In mid-December, DeBruycker was feeling the pressure of tight feed supplies. “We’re already mixing milled barley with straw to stretch things out.”
They also added pelletized beet pulp from eastern Montana to the rations. “I don’t know what things will be like in April,” he says.
The Debruyckers farm and ranch 75,000 acres, one-third of it deeded. “We’ll at least have more baled straw handy for future tough times,” DeBruycker says. “But I’d like a year’s warning that the drought is coming.”
Holdovers and leftovers
Doug Hunter and his two sons run almost 300 head of purebred and commercial cows and heifers east of the Sask.-Man. border at Roblin in Manitoba’s Parkland area. He says they received slightly more moisture than most of the Prairies and so they were faring better than many cattle producers.
“We’ll be okay,” he says, “but nothing extra.”
Hunter has been in the cattle business for 60 years and has weathered a few droughts. “It’s never easy. You spend too much time worrying.”
Hunter says they have leftover silage from 2020, plus they baled extra straw last fall to bolster their supplies. He says they should try to increase holdover feed supplies in future years for the next drought.
“It is always tempting to sell off your extra feed and find a few extra dollars.”
Rainy region friends
West of the Alta.-Sask. border at Altario, Rick Strankman and his son Jay are primarily grain farmers, but they run 25 commercial cows (and others on shares). His crops were sub-par, and “combining took only half the time as usual,” Strankman says.
Strankman’s hay and alfalfa crops weren’t much either, he adds. He did say the fall was milder leading into December and so they left the cattle out grazing and browsing much later in the pastures and fields.
Strankman wasn’t worried though. His ace to play is a sheep farmer 125 miles away, just northwest of Lloydminster.
“He always has extra feed sources for me if I need it,” he says, adding that was the case in early winter. “He does a lot of trucking and feed hauling — he’s almost a feed broker for me.”
The Strankmans had minimal leftover feed from last year. Strankman’s best strategy for future droughts may be to keep the sheep farmer-trucker friendship going.
Beef industry infrastructure
Brent Carey is a beef cattle auctioneer out of Stavely, Alta. He books 110 sales annually. He also runs a modest commercial herd of 25 cows, although down from 100 four years ago. He’s been feeding them a liquid supplement poured over year-old barley straw.
“They seem to like that better than fresh straw, for some reason,” he says.
Carey says the supplement is produced at Lethbridge. It includes unique feedstock such as mashed-up sugar beet “seconds” from southern Alberta fields. “It includes molasses. The cows just love it,” he says. He is apprehensive “that the next truckload may cost more.”
Canfax reports the cow herd only contracted about 13 per cent last year (11 to 12 per cent is normal). Still, Carey scratches his head over what may be drought fallout with a smaller cow herd and the subsequent lower fat cattle inventories heading to the slaughterhouses during the next years.
“I’m actually worried about our beef cattle infrastructure.”
Sign of the times
Danny Hansen worries about the hungry cattle he occasionally sees as he drives Rockyview County as a rural realtor, based in Airdrie, Alta. In mid-January he had observed “skinny cattle out in the stubble field trying to find food.”
Hansen himself will calve out 60 purebred Charolais females this year. He mentions that he is okay with his feed inventory, including leftovers from 2020. However, the appearance of malnourished cattle has alarmed him, and he says it will look worse in two months.
“Cattle aren’t the best foragers in snow or in -20 C weather.”
Helping bull customers
Deb Oram, her husband Mark and their grown family run cattle as Valley’s End Ranch, just south of Lake Diefenbaker near Central Butte, Sask. “We’ll be ‘nip and tuck’ for feed,” Deb says. “We should be okay, but none extra.”
To help out their customers’ feed situations, the Orams invited their bull buying customers to bale everything from the Orams’ combines. That left the customers with a wide variety of canola, durum and pea straw. The Oram lands are partially irrigated.
The Orams will calve out 220 females this winter, about half commercial cows (Angus and Simmental) and half purebred Charolais.
Oram says they scrambled just in time to pull together feed supplies. Winter or early spring is too late and too desperate, she says.
“We do have our names out there for the ‘Hay West’ effort,” she adds.
Neighbour in need
Just west of Lamont, Alta., Frank Cholak and his son Stephen have about 50 purebred females to calve out. Cholak says their region east of Edmonton received marginally more rain than other parts of the Prairies. He figures they’ll be okay for feed.
However, on a hunch, Cholak cut and baled up his “adjusted” drought-stricken canola field. He casually mentioned it to a neighbour.
“Before I knew it, the phone rang and I was hauling it over to him.” He admits it isn’t the best, “but it’s something to get him through March and April,” Cholak says. “It actually makes decent feed, but has a bitter taste to it.”
Cholak also baled up extra oats greenfeed to further help the neighbour.
Sell the cows, then the hay
Bordering Spruce Woods Provincial Park at Cypress River, Man., Defoort Stock Farm is withstanding the feed situation quite nicely, says Sue Defoort.
She and husband Gord used to run a bull test station until 2005. In addition, they had a 185-cow purebred herd. Then their two sons grew up, left home and the Defoorts chose to sell. The last cow left the yard two years ago.
In the last few years, they’ve been leasing out pasturelands and selling standing hay. “It makes us the good guys, the suppliers,” she says. “We sold baled hay too, but at a fair price.”
COVID-19 stress,not drought stress
West of Didsbury, Alta., Barry Reese has a herd of 125 purebred Charolais females. He sells 35 bulls yearly. When COVID-19 hit in March 2020, his annual bull sale was one of the first to be “locked down” and he pioneered an online auction.
“I’m sure that was the toughest, most stressful day of Barry’s life,” says his dad, Harry. A father would know.
“Our feed supplies will be enough,” said Barry in December. “We’ll have holdover feed from previous years.”
All pull together
Tougher challenges, like the drought-stricken feed supplies, only cause cattle producers to huddle up and help each other, notes Altario’s Rick Strankman.
“We are by nature resilient and innovative.”
– Mark Kihn is an original farm boy from Basswood, Man. He is the former editor/publisher of the Charolais Banner. Kihn writes out of Calgary.
For more content related to drought management visit The Dry Times, where you can find a collection of stories from our family of publications as well as links to external resources to support your decisions through these difficult times.
