OSLER, Sask. – Bryce Fisher built his farm by watching others and taking the best of those businesses and incorporating them into his own.
“I didn’t have anything, so starting from scratch you can’t afford to do things poorly … and can’t be afraid to change or learn to do new stuff. If it pays, you do it,” said Fischer, who is owner of R and F Livestock Inc. and has been farming for 15 years.
Last August, Fisher learned something he couldn’t learn from others: how to sell his herd and start again.
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Even one of North America’s top dairy cows, Edlo Rudolph Daunta, went on the auction block, although Fisher retained a share in the animal, and it stayed on his farm.
Fisher’s dairy herd dispersal sale proved one of the largest in western Canadian history, 720 head of dairy cattle and calves over two days. His average selling price for the second day of the sale, reserved for his 120 best cows, was a successful $7,799, with the high seller hitting $78,000.
“I’d been told you couldn’t have a sale of that size and quality in Western Canada. You’d have to truck the cattle to Ontario. You couldn’t have it in August. All that stuff. Western Canada’s got a mature dairy industry and I couldn’t see why not,” he said.
Two consecutive years of severe drought in the central Prairies had forced Fisher to reconsider every aspect of his operation.
“When you are buying a semi-load of hay just about every day and it costs about ($2,500), you have to consider the feed side of the business pretty carefully. You need fewer cows,” he said.
Fisher had more than 1,200 head of cows on feed.
Until that point, he thought his seven quarter-sections of land were enough.
Today he still milks 120 of his best animals, supplies a couple of American dairy farms with Holstein heifers and fresh cows, brokers the sales of other farmers’ herds on a monthly basis, buys and sells milk quota and cows, shows Holsteins across Canada and in the United States and assembles loads of cattle for brokers that sell worldwide.
“I couldn’t afford to specialize. I hear that’s what you’re supposed to do. But I don’t want all my eggs in one basket. I sell cows to farmers who want one or a truckload,” he said.
Fisher was born into farming and cow milking in central Saskatchewan. He left home in his teens for work at some of the top dairy farms in the region. He became a herdsman for several years and learned some of the best practices.
“I started by picking up a few good young cows, bringing them along, selling them and getting some more. Eventually you are in business on your own,” he said.
Then business for Fisher meant milking only as a necessity. His main work was finding and selling cattle. The price for Canadian milk quota was depressed so farmers in Canada were getting out as buyers in Mexico and southeast Asia were expanding “as fast as they could build barns.”
Ten years ago the business peaked, with Fisher loading 10 semi-trailer loads of cows bound for Mexico in a single day. Today, he works through an American broker.
He built up the quality of his own breeding stock, “but got tired of throwing out all that milk every day” as he held cows waiting to be bred before a sale.
“Five years ago, we had the opportunity to expand the milking and do it profitably, so we built new facilities,” he said.
“Now that the sale is over I get to rebuild. It was so good I think I’ll do it again in two years,” he said.
“I spend a lot of time on the phone. This guy (in Iowa) has bought more than 3,500 cows from me in the past five years for his own herd, but we’ve never met. That’s the kind of reputation I want to keep,” he said.
He has taken on an additional 1,280 acres of land and said he has to be self-sufficient in feed.
Fisher flushed, sexed and froze embryos from his best cows before the sale. This winter his calf barn is filling with a new herd of R and F Holsteins.
“That past right there is this farm’s future,” he said with a wave at the little black and white calves in his barn.
