The prairie cash market for cattle is mainly in limbo, but its few twitches show there is still demand for some animals.
That was what St. Paul, Alta., auctioneer Rick Cherniwchan found at the St. Paul Auction Mart’s cattle sale June 2.
“There’s probably a decent market for grassers,” said Cherniwchan, who managed to sell all the cow-calf pairs he had in the pens for $1,374 each.
“They sold well.”
Unfortunately his entire cattle sale was four animals: two cow-calf pairs.
“We might as well have been closed,” he said.
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Most auctions have closed because of uncertainty over prices and demand. But supply is also becoming a problem. Producers don’t expect any buyers to be at the auction, so they don’t take their cattle to market.
That leads to cancelled sales.
“We’re just not getting enough cattle to keep the buyers interested,” said Williams Lake, B.C., auction manager Al Smith.
“If we can get only 60 or 70, it isn’t worth the buyers’ time to come up here.”
Smith said his company, the B.C. Livestock Producers Co-operative Association, was cancelling its June 5 sale because it couldn’t find enough cattle to sell.
Gene Parks, manager of Pipestone Livestock Sales in Manitoba and Whitewood Auction Service in Saskatchewan, said his markets are closed until the border is reopened.
“We’re in a holding pattern,” said Parks.
Cherniwchan said producers who still want to sell grassers can probably find a market, but they should call their auction markets to find out where the demand is. They shouldn’t assume their local auction market is either open or closed.
Meanwhile, the shutdown of Canadian beef exports is also a blow to the farm economy in Eastern Canada.
Sales volumes are down, money is being lost and beef producers are nervous.
Isabel Dopta of the Ontario Cattlemen’s Association said sales volumes are down 50 percent and prices are down 25 percent.
In Ontario, the closed border blocks cattle and beef sales that are worth $700 million annually. The provincial cow herd is 400,000.
