Saskatchewan will spend $17.5 million to provide cash flow to cattle producers with cull animals.
Agriculture minister Clay Serby announced Dec. 10 the province would pay $128 per eligible beef and dairy animal to help offset the market downturn caused by bovine spongiform encephalopathy. Producers will not have to slaughter those animals to get the money.
The program brings the total spending by the province on BSE mitigation measures to $60 million, and represents its 40 percent contribution to the national cull program announced last month.
Producers may qualify for both programs and receive a maximum of $320. Many cull cows, for example, were bred this summer when the market collapsed and they were left on pasture. Producers might not slaughter them until after those calves are born.
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“That package I think, and not tying it to slaughter, allows people to keep their animals now into mid-May or longer … and still capture the full value of the $320,” Serby said. “With the $320 and whatever the market might bring them next fall, they could conceivably be close … to what they might have captured before BSE.”
He said providing cash flow helps individual producers and also helps maintain the provincial herd.
The province has 1.3 million beef cows and about 50,000 bulls.
To participate in the Saskatchewan program, producers must register their herds by Jan. 31, based on herd numbers as of Sept. 1. Eight percent of beef cows and 16 percent of dairy cows are eligible, as long as they are older than 30 months of age.
Bison, elk, deer, sheep and goats are also eligible for payments. Bison are paid at the same level as cattle. Elk and deer payments had not been finalized by Dec. 11. Sheep and goat breeders are eligible for $25.60 per breeding animal.
