PANSY, Man. – Bringing new ideas to the southeast corner of Manitoba is part of Robert Krentz’s strategy to make money raising cattle.
Consider his new processing building. The ramps, alleys and platforms make it look like part maze, part jungle gym. He modeled the 245-square-metre building after one he saw on a Nebraska feedlot.
“The average place, it’s always a big job to run cattle through,” Krentz said. In his building, he can sort and treat cattle all by himself. “You could run cattle through all day, it could be like an assembly line.”
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Like other producers in southeastern Manitoba, he said it’s “the cheapest place in all of the world to raise a calf.
“I’ve figured it all out: The price of land, the cost of production … free trade, where the cow’s going to be killed in the States.”
James Bezan, of the Manitoba Cattle Producers Association, said he expects the province’s cow herd to pass the 1976 record herd of 516,000 this summer. And in five years, Bezan said the provincial herd should increase by 50 percent.
Bezan said the southeast region has the biggest potential for expansion in the province. While only five percent of the province’s cow herd is here, more producers are shifting to land use as forage.
A lot of the land is rocky, sandy or swampy, making it tough to grow grain. The end of transportation subsidies for grain means it’s probably not going to be worthwhile to grow it on marginal land, while feed grain prices in nearby regions will drop.
Sid Wilkinson raises purebred Maine Anjou and Red Angus cattle on 2,000 acres near Ridgeville, Man. Until prices bottomed out in the late 1980s, he farmed his land for grain.
Since then, he’s doubled his herd and his enjoyment. “I don’t mind putting up hay, but seeding was never a lot of fun.”
Wilkinson said he thinks he has some of the strongest poll genetics in the Maine Anjou breed, adding that raising quality cattle the market wants is important to his operation.
Krentz said diversifying his operations to suit his land was crucial. He and his brother Gordon originally planned to be self sufficient. But after about 10 years of growing grain on their sandy land, Krentz said they decided to move into forages and grow only some corn for silage.
He also got into raising bred heifers. He feeds them silage all winter, then moves them onto the forage and markets them in the fall. “I never have to put grain into that product, so that was the perfect product for me to really move through our farm,” he said, adding that he wants to sell about 250 replacement heifers a year.
Krentz’s father moved to the area in 1970, and started off on a section of land. The operation has never stopped growing.
Krentz scooped up more than 3,000 acres of land in the late 1980s, when grain prices bottomed out and some farmers in the area went broke. He now has a total of 6,700 acres; 1,200 of hay, 1,500 of forages for pasture, 650 of corn, 400 in a grain-alfalfa rotation and the rest in native pasture.
He has 500 Simmental-Red Angus cow-calf pairs, 400 heifers in pasture and between 800 and 1,000 head in his feedlot.
“I’ve got three little boys, and I say to myself, we have enough land base right now that some day, we can double this operation on this same acreage. We don’t need no more land, just manage it tighter,” Krentz said.
