An increase in heifer retention, reflected in July 1 cattle inventories reported by Statistics Canada, may signal the end of cattle herd liquidation.
Brian Perillat, senior analyst with Canfax, said figures released Aug. 22 showing a 6.7 percent increase in replacement heifers as of July 1, compared to one year earlier, bodes well for herd stabilization.
However, most of that increase is in Western Canada, and the Canadian beef herd size overall is down 1.1 percent from a year ago. With dairy cattle included, the domestic herd shrunk by 0.8 percent in the last year.
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“We knew it was going to be smaller and we figured the decline would be slowing down,” said Perillat.
“It’s good to see. We were hearing anecdotally that a lot more heifers would be exposed this year, so this kind of confirms it. Especially in the West, in Alberta and Saskatchewan, there’s a fair bit more heifer retention. It’s not huge by any means, compared to even where we were three or four years ago, but it is slowly ticking upwards, so that’s good.”
Alberta, with Canada’s largest cattle herd, showed the largest increase, up 10,000 from last year to total 5.5 million.
Saskatchewan increased its herd by 5,000 since July last year, now standing at 3.06 million.
Manitoba’s herd fell 45,000, to 1.3 million and B.C. fell 6,000 to 650,000 cattle as of July 1.
Perillat said abundant grazing, forage and feed should encourage cattle producers to retain animals.
“On the feeder calf side, there’s pretty good cost-to-gain advantage, cheaper feed grain up here, and that’s helping us keep the calves at home and finish them here as well.”
Overall slaughter numbers are down due to reduced inventory and exports are down almost 40 percent from the same period in 2010, also because of fewer marketings. The strong Canadian dollar and a tight basis are keeping slaughter cattle at home.
Perillat said record-breaking feedlot placements in the United States in July show the depth of drought problems in Texas and Oklahoma. Those two states have more cattle than all of Canada.
The U.S. herd continues to shrink.
“In another year, even six months, the calf supplies are going to be extremely tight, which should bode well for us,” Perillat said.
• In the hog sector, the Canadian herd is up 0.8 percent compared to July 2010, to 11.9 million. It was the first increase in July inventories year over year since 2006. This is the second consecutive quarter of hog herd growth.
Quebec and Alberta reported declines since last year of 0.5 and 0.3 percent respectively, but other provinces reported gains. Canadian hog slaughter was down 1.3 percent at 5.1 million compared to the same period in 2010 and exports of 1.4 million were down 3.1 percent from the same period in 2010.
• Sheep numbers were up 2.2 percent to 1.1 million head in Canada compared to July 2010. Canadian sheep associations are encouraging flock increases to meet demand for lamb.
In Western Canada, the flock grew to 424,000 from 413,000 reported a year ago. In Eastern Canada, the flock grew to 646,300 from 629,200 a year ago.
In the first six months of 2011, 320,500 sheep were sent to slaughter in Canada, down 3.7 percent from the same period in 2010.
The country exported 3,000 lambs in the first half of 2011, after four years of zero exports, Statistics Canada reported.
