Michael Raine

Winter wheat may take a dramatic leap forward due to recent investments in plant breeding technology at the University of Saskatchewan. Brian Fowler leads the winter wheat breeding program at the university’s College of Agriculture. He said development times for new varieties of winter wheat will be halved by a $25,000 investment from Ducks Unlimited […] Read more

Penicillin-contaminated pork was recalled by Mitchell’s Gourmet Foods in Saskatoon last weekend. More than 500 pigs were slaughtered and processed in the first couple of hours of business at Mitchell’s Gourmet Foods on Dec. 5. A day earlier a single hog operation shipped 215 hogs to slaughter at the Saskatoon meat packer. Theirs were among […] Read more

REGINA – The ailing bison industry needs a long-term strategic plan, and fundamental changes in practices from the farm to the grocery store. That was the message delivered in a consultant’s report at the Canadian National Bison Convention in Regina last month. Bison prices for meat and breeding stock reached a 10-year low this summer […] Read more

Leonard Epp has 700 bison feeder bulls to finish this winter. He said selling meat to directly to consumers from his yard is a non-starter. He has 1,200 bison on his farm near Winnipeg and said he anticipated the fall in breeding stock prices. “It was inevitable. The business of meeting the breeding stock market […] Read more

REGINA – Buffalo may be the name for meat produced by the bison industry if the Canadian Bison Association accepts a marketing consultant’s report. Kaji Kado, a meat industry consultant with PPD Inc., told the Canadian Bison Association during the Canadian National Bison Convention in Regina that name confusion makes it harder to sell bison […] Read more

The Saskatchewan government wants hunters to give it their deer heads so pathologists can check them for chronic wasting disease. The provincial environment department made the request for white-tailed deer, mule deer and elk heads earlier this year, but so far not enough heads have been submitted. When the program was announced, the department said […] Read more

Canada has moved its beef grades into step with the United States by eliminating muscling ratings and cutting the back fat measurement to two millimetres from four. The changes, which came into effect in early November, put the Canadian Grade A rating on par with the U.S. Department of Agriculture choice grades, which don’t require […] Read more

Dave Collins is raising a stink about the smell of his rural community. Collins lives in Dalmeny, Sask., a small farming community near Saskatoon. He is suing his rural municipality over the smell from local farms. Collins moved to Dalmeny in 1995 and said in the last two years a dairy farm and some poultry […] Read more

MAYMONT & REGINA, Sask. – Two shiny aluminum cattle trailers sit on either side of the driveway, a testament to this farm’s success. Red writing on the trailers’ sides proclaims “Champion,” a term that Dennis and Lisa Serhienko have heard a lot in the past five years. They and Lisa’s family, the Voegelis, have seen […] Read more

Saskatchewan is just getting started with finishing, says the beef industry about the province’s cattle feeding potential. Despite Saskatchewan’s natural advantages of centralized feed production, inexpensive land and available water supplies, cattle feeding has never been big business. Many producers instead ship cattle to Alberta and the United States. The pattern of exports is long-standing […] Read more