LLOYDMINSTER, Sask. – It may have been a sign of the next day’s events. The Friday evening elk viewing leading up to the show and sale was more like a social evening than a livestock preview.
Women wore fur coats. Waitresses carried trays of wine and hors d’oeuvres to visitors. Everyone seemed happy.
The next day just under $1.5 million was spent buying 120 elk.
“We’ve been in the business 20 years and it gets better all the time,” said Suzann Alsager, of Maidstone, Sask.
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A half interest in their 11-year-old bull elk, Angus, sold for $130,000 at the Lloydminster Elk Breeders Classic sale last weekend. The elk with the world record 452-inch (1,150 centimetre) set of antlers will go to Wichita, Kansas after Christmas for the 1996 breeding season.
Alsager and her husband Rick also sold the high-selling female for $26,250 at the sale.
Alsager said she recognized few of the 1,800 buyers at the sale and most of them were new to the business.
“The demand is there and we can’t supply that demand.”
“It was a very strong sale. There weren’t any low prices,” said Don Jarrett, chair of the organizing committee. “The industry has been going for a while and it needed a big event like this.”
There are about 240 elk breeders in Alberta, who own 9,500 head. In Saskatche-wan there are about 130 elk breeders with 7,500 head. That is up from about 20 elk farms operating in 1987 when the industry organization officially formed, said Marshall Patterson, senior livestock development specialist with Saskatchewan Agriculture in Regina.
Patterson said there are no signs the industry is slowing down. At Canadian Western Agribition in Regina last month, bred females sold for $16,100 to $19,800.
While few bulls are sold at public auctions, there are rumors a good velvet-producing bull elk will sell for more than $30,000, Patterson said.
The basis of the industry is velvet production and the products made from velvet. The products are exported to Korea and other Asian countries for health remedies.
A bull in its prime can produce about 14 kilograms of velvet each year. At $240 to $260 a kg, that’s $3,600 a year from each bull.
With an initial cost of $510 a year for feeding and fencing, that’s a “pretty big margin,” said Patterson.
Kerry and Debbie Wells, of Marsden, Sask., walked around the box stalls Friday evening.
“We came to check out the quality of animals,” said Kerry, who admits he got into elk a few years ago because he was “sick of feeding cattle.
“I used to be in the custom feeding business, but the margins are no longer in it.”
The lure of making money is the primary reason people are attracted to the business, said Jarrett, who switched from raising purebred Hereford to elk a few years ago.
“It isn’t difficult to pen in around 20 percent return. It’s the most profitable diversification in agriculture.”
Better quality in Canada
Cathy Wiescamp and Ralph Holcomb, of Alamosa, Co., flew from the United States for the sale. Holcomb said the quality of animals is superior to elk in his home state.
“I’d much rather have one of these than an average one. These will sell themselves,” he said.
It’s easier to come to Canada to buy an animal from a breeder that has spent years selecting for size and velvet production than it is to spend years breeding the same animal.
“We can come up here and buy animals that it has taken them 15 years to raise – if we can buy them,” Holcomb said with a smile.
Rudy Jurke, of Lloydminster, Sask., said he and his wife were both over 60 when they went to the bank to borrow $200,000 to start raising elk.
“The reason was simply economics,” said Jurke, who sold 10 head during the sale.
