WOOD MOUNTAIN, Sask. – On a day when most ranchers should feel upbeat, Terry and Barbara Moneo approached their 15th annual spring bull and female sale on April 16 with trepidation.
The BSE crisis has probably cost the long-time purebred Angus breeders and owners of Peak Dot Ranch about $500,000 since the borders closed to Canadian cattle last May 20.
After international cattle and beef trade stopped, the family decided to cancel its regular fall sale and move all lots to its annual spring event.
“We never sold a dry cow,” Terry Moneo said. “I decided I was going to sit this out.”
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They made tough management decisions to stay afloat as the ban continued and politicians debated.
“As a rancher you can deal with drought and just about anything else, but when you deal with politics, it’s tough,” he said.
By the end of the sale day, their relief was palpable. They had sold every lot on offer with an average of $2,706 on 166 bulls and $2,266 on 81 females.
Buyers were offered financing agreements, free delivery and discounts on volume purchases. Seventy-five percent of buyers took advantage of the offers.
The high-selling lot was a four-year-old American-born bull that went for $25,000 to Pat Friedel, owner of Ring Creek Farm of Fairview, Alta.
This was not one of the Moneo’s better events. Sale grosses in past years exceeded $1 million as buyers from across North America bid and bought prime Angus beef cattle. This year, bulls started at $1,400.
“I was pleased to see the cheaper bulls,” he said. “Nothing is worse than having people not come back because they think they can’t afford it.”
Losing American customers for their prime breeding stock is a major blow to the Moneos, who ranch with their adult children. The ranch is almost a stone’s throw from the Montana border and in past years more than a third of the stock from their spring and fall sales went to American buyers.
Those buyers accounted for 50 percent of the value received on sale bulls and females.
While the family is planning its next sale, Moneo is also watching the future of the Canadian beef industry. He believes it will be different once trade normalizes, with some of the changes being for the better.
He predicts the crisis has injected hardheaded discipline into the industry that is likely to emerge leaner and more calculating.
However, it has also forced changes he did not want.
His wife, Barbara, a former teacher, recently retired and they planned to gradually turn the ranch over to their sons. Those plans are on hold.
“This has set us back five years,” he said after the sale. When his sons were children, he talked them into becoming ranchers but now seriously wonders if convincing his grandchildren to stay is wise as the agricultural economy continues its downward trend.
The sons plan to expand the herd to 1,000 cows from 650 cows. It is possible, but Moneo foresees the day when ranches and farms in the southern Prairies will grow and be managed by only a few.
Management on their ranch is strict.
“We run this place as close to a ranch as we can. We raise them like range cattle with lots of exercise.”
They calve twice a year with a fall and spring breeding program, which allows them to use fewer bulls. They are also looking for calving ease and calves that can grow quickly in 205 days without being pushed.
Moneo is an unsentimental businessperson who speaks directly to questions, but he also has a sense of history and wants the ranch to continue.
A former Northwest Mounted Police barracks is nearby where the Mounties were based to control the whiskey trade from the U.S. It is also the territory inhabited by Chief Sitting Bull after he and his people fled the United States after the battle of Little Big Horn.
His family homesteaded in 1911 and his grandchildren are the fifth generation to live there.
His father, John, started the purebred black Angus business in 1968 and came up with the name Peak Dot Ranch from a favorite Zane Grey novel.
