LLOYDMINSTER, Sask. – If livestock shows were cattle, the Stockade Roundup would be the one that every purebred producer in Lloydminster’s border region would bid on.
In tough times and in good, the event draws local commercial cattle producers from a 250 kilometre radius, and that brings in the purebred breeders.
“This show isn’t the biggest, but it’s important to every breeder in the area. From here we reach to Edmonton and Saskatoon,” said Justin Johner of Johner Stock Farm in Maidstone, Sask., comparing the Lloydminster event to Regina’s Western Canadian Agribition or Edmonton’s Farmfair.
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The Johner family produces Polled Hereford and Black and Red Angus cattle. They attend Agribition but say Lloydminster is still where they develop most of their annual sales.
“We sell semen and embryos to Au stralia and South America, but in the cattle business you do most of your business in your own area. We rely on our neighbours and they rely on us. It’s a community,” said Johner.
Sam Hardstaff manages the show in Lloydminster.
“We had 300 head of purebreds in 11 breeds. We’re the warmup show for Edmonton, Saskatoon and Regina. But just because there’s a lot of halter training going on in our ring doesn’t mean this isn’t an important show.”
Hardstaff said this year’s 44 head of bred heifers, 40 feeder calves and 14 pens of bulls added to the draw for commercial growers.
“This is tight year. Prices are under pressure. But people still come out to our show. Entries and attendance are steady year after year,” she said of the 29-year-old event, which unlike most other shows still pays prize money.
“We don’t play a lot of money. But it’s something and we think it’s important,” she said.
The Johners, like other producers who show at Lloydminster, were looking to get a local grand champion award that will qualify them to compete at Agribition’s elite RBC Beef Supreme Challenge. That event gathers male and female breed winners from 14 other shows across North America.
Johner said the Stockade Roundup is an opportunity to build market awareness for his family’s own bull sale in February that also takes place at the Lloydminster Exhibition facility.
Hardstaff said the public often overlooks the region, both in Alberta and Saskatchewan, as being cattle country.
“There are more cattle up here than down south. And some old, traditional producer families up here,” she said.
The Lloydminster Pride of the Prairies Bull Sale will be 89 years old in 2008, an event that auctions nearly 300 bulls annually.
“A lot of the breeders that are here in early November are back in March for that sale, if they don’t hold their own,” she said.
Despite depressed cattle prices the Stockade had an average of $936 for yearling, bred heifers and $600 for heifer calves. The supreme champions from the event were both bred by Justamere Farms at Lloydminster. The female was Red Angus, Red Justamere Dixie 193R, and the bull Black Angus, Justamere 253 Next Step 113R.
The Johners got their Agribition entry with a grand champion Polled Hereford bull in Lloydminster.
