SCOUT LAKE, Sask. – Rick Maddess sits on a five-gallon pail and Randy Clark leans against a wall stud.
The office is far from ready, but the end is in sight for the general manager and board member of Rolling Hills Feedlot.
The pens are built, feed is arriving and electricians and welders are putting the finishing touches on watering systems, the feed mill, yard lights and gates.
And now, Maddess can finally answer the question everyone has been asking: when are the cattle coming?
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The first 151 head arrived Oct. 4, bought by a local cattle buyer.
Rolling Hills Feedlot has been a long time in the making. Local residents first floated the idea seven years ago but then BSE hit and stopped the project in its tracks.
Proponents began fundraising again in earnest two years ago, selling shares to 60 to 70 people who live mostly within a 70 kilometre radius.
“It was a struggle with the economy the way it was,” said president Doyle Knoss.
Construction began last summer, with the board of directors in charge.
“The board did all the tendering,” Clark said. “Three of us on the board were construction managers.”
Knoss said construction costs came in at about $450 per head, a figure he described as a shock but one the board calculated before starting to build.
The facility can house 9,000 cattle and has permits to double that capacity. It will operate as a custom lot. Knoss said the board has no immediate plans to own cattle.
“We would love to have producer-owned cattle but that isn’t always the case,” Maddess said.
“I think the majority will come from the auction barn.”
He said the feedlot will initially focus on backgrounding cattle to about 875 pounds and then shipping them south.
“Every time the dollar drops it makes it cheaper to feed cattle up here,” Maddess said.
“But everybody’s just a little spooked right now.”
The financial crisis in the United States has everyone wondering what will happen in the market.
The implementation of country-of-origin labelling in the United States is another factor. Cattle that are finished in the U.S. will meet that country’s requirements.
Clark said Saskatchewan has a 1,000 km advantage over Alberta when it comes to shipping cattle south.
Rolling Hills also has a freight advantage when it comes to feed.
The custom feedlot is on Grid 705 about halfway between Scout Lake and Willow Bunch. It is close to what Maddess calls the cattle catchment areas of Rockglen, Assiniboia and Coronach, as well as major stockyards in Assiniboia, Mankota, Moose Jaw, Weyburn and Swift Current.
The site was selected because of its environmental suitability: clay soil, a slough for a natural runoff reservoir and abundant water.
Clark said there are no environmental stipulations on the permit, meaning nothing had to be modified to accommodate a feeding operation.
Three wells into the Frenchman and Ravenscrag aquifers provide twice as much water as the feedlot will need.
Maddess expects to employ nine full-time and some part-time staff. There is a knowledgeable labour pool, but also competition from larger players such as the coal mine and power plant at Coronach and the recently opened kaolin mine at Wood Mountain.
Knoss said the feedlot opened at the eleventh hour in terms of the fall calf run. He’s optimistic it will fill.
Looking back, he said the most difficult part of the project was convincing people, particularly lenders, that a custom lot is a good investment.
“Just because the feeding industry is suffering (doesn’t mean) a custom feedlot won’t work,” he said.
