STRATHMORE, Alta. – A feeder cattle show has put a new twist on the commercial beef side of the Calgary Stampede.
The show has been held at participating auction yards near Calgary for many years as part of the Stampede, but for the first time producers were invited to enter pens of feeder steers and heifers.
The organizers felt there would be more buyer interest if feeders were gathered and shown, said committee chair Greg Sanderson of Olds, Alta.
“We are hoping to build this into a one of a kind thing,” he said. “People like to showcase what they produce.”
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He said presenting fresh, young cattle that had probably just come off grass is another way to show people what Alberta beef on the hoof looks like and remind them that the province and the Stampede were built on agriculture.
Five judges independently evaluated five pens of five feeder steers and 12 groups of five heifers and scored them according to consistency, ability to feed and condition.
The champion pens were eligible for a $2,500 first prize and $1,000 for the reserve pens plus the sales proceeds. The grand champion pen of steers came from Bruce and Greg Appleyard of Strathmore. The average weight was 959 pounds and the steers sold for $125.50 per hundredweight.
The reserve came from Ken Wenaas Enterprises and sold for $133 per cwt. to Andy Rock Livestock of Delia, Alta. The average weight was 893 lb.
Rock won grand and reserve pens of heifers and sold them for $126 per cwt. and $130, respectively. The champion heifers weighed 970 lb. and the reserve weighed 911 lb. on average.
He said it was difficult to put the pens together, not because of a shortage of good cattle but because too much rain made it difficult to enter pastures.
“I was just lucky to find them.”
A few days earlier, his home turf in central Alberta received 125 to 175 millimetres of rain in a single day and pastures were saturated.
