Statistics Canada’s July 1 quarterly livestock inventory showed declines across the board in the number of animals on farms compared to last year.
The cattle herd sank by 4.75 percent, the hog herd by 3.05 percent and sheep flock by 4.38 percent compared to last year at the same time.
The cattle and sheep numbers reflect a market adjusting after the United States partially reopened its border to Canadian cattle and sheep trade. Those numbers had built up during the closure that followed the discovery of BSE in Canada.
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Look for coverage of the cattle inventory report in this week’s Livestock section.
The hog inventory report shows a sharp geographic divergence with modest growth in the West, but stronger declines in the East.
The numbers reflect a year of weak prices in Canada, problems with disease and the economics of feeding Canadian pigs in the U.S.
Producers across the country are struggling with hog prices, which in the first six months of 2006 were about 19 percent below the comparable period in 2005.
But the herd declines were largely in the East.
Inventories in Eastern Canada fell 5.14 percent, but in Western Canada, the drop was only 0.35 percent.
One explanation might be that disease has hurt production in Quebec and Ontario more than in normal years. Producers have been contending with a new strain of porcine circovirus along with other diseases sometimes made worse by this virulent disease.
The number of deaths and condemnations in the April to June quarter were up 37 percent in the East, but were about steady in the West.
The numbers also indicate that if not for strong exports of feeders to the U.S. for fattening, the herd in the West would have grown. Exports of feeder pigs to the U.S. in the first half of the year are up close to 10 percent and the West accounts for all of the increase.
Looking at sow and boar numbers only, the herd decline is much less serious.
Nationally, the breeding stock number was down only 0.4 percent and the entire decline was in the East. The western breeding herd actually rose by one percent.
The growth was led by Manitoba, up by 2.5 percent from a year ago. The number of sows and boars in Saskatchewan rose by 1.3 percent, but Alberta’s breeding herd dropped by 1.4 percent and British Columbia’s dropped by about one percent.
These numbers reflect the market reality that Canadian breeding operations turn out piglets more efficiently than American ones, but cheap U.S. corn and the stronger Canadian dollar make it more profitable to feed those Canuck pigs in the U.S.
