MILK RIVER, Alta. – Roy Audet slides a photo album across the kitchen table. Photos of a full hay yard taken in past years sit in stark contrast to the current view from his dining room window.
The cattle are already home and on feed, and the hay lot is only half full.
It is early October and Audet’s dilemma is obvious. He doesn’t have enough hay for the winter.
He is not alone. Cattle producers across western Saskatchewan and southern Alberta are running out of feed and water for their animals. Their options are few, and the solutions are either expensive or perilous to their businesses.
Read Also
AI expected to make itself felt in food systems
Artificial intelligence is already transforming the food we eat, how farmers produce it and how it reaches the consumer, experts say
Audet has seen years like 2001 before.
“We haven’t had any less rain than in previous years. But this is the sixth year of drought in a row. I thought I’d drought proofed. I guess I wasn’t planning for one that would last this long.”
Rain and snow have delivered less than 100 millimetres of moisture in his part of southern Alberta in each of the past four years.
Audet has good reason to believe he had prepared for dry conditions. He installed a 400 metre irrigation pivot and began grassland conservation practices more than a decade ago. In 2000, he and his wife Christy were given the Canadian Cattle Commission’s highest environmental award.
He planted a crested wheat grass pasture for early spring grazing to reduce the days on hay and protect native pasture, and cut his herd to a more manageable 100 cows.
But it wasn’t enough.
For the first time in 30 years of ranching, he is counting his bales and calculating when he will run out of feed.
“We used to start feeding in December,” he said. “This year it was August. Heck, I used to sell hay.”
Farther to the east, on the edge of Saskatchewan’s Great Sand Hills near Fox Valley, it is so dry that Edward Bosch can’t even pound fence posts into his soil.
“You have to hire the posts done because they jet the holes out,” Bosch said.
“It is the only way you can do it without breaking the tops off or mushrooming them. It’s just another expense you don’t count on.”
Bosch baled kochia for feed this winter and is buying alfalfa. He hasn’t found enough straw yet and is competing with the oil and gas industry, which uses it
to restore gas drilling sites.
He is short of both hay and straw, but said he would be in even more trouble if it wasn’t for the hay left from last year’s good crop.
“You never figure that you’re going to have to have straw trucked in from a long way away. There’s another cost this year,” he said. “Neighbours are fencing their cropland. They’re grazing those short little cereal crops they didn’t bother harvesting, but that’s going to run out in a month or so.”
Bosch, who had also planned for dry years, said his efforts to develop a stable water supply have paid off. He said he will be able to water his cattle for as long as he can feed them.
He weaned his calves early to preserve pasture and reduce feed use. He sold them on Sept. 27, more than a month earlier than usual and will bring his herd
home at the end of October, six weeks early.
Audet spent late September reviewing his options. Cattle associations and governments have recommended that producers consider selling their herds, using government programs to defer the income and then buying back into the market when weather conditions improve.
Audet said he doesn’t think that option will work for him and many other mid-sized cattle producers.
“It still costs money to operate a farm,” he said.
“It costs money to live. You have no calf crop to sell from the year you are out. Maybe two years. As soon as the drought is considered over, you are required to buy back in or pay the taxes on the income.
“In the meantime you needed the money to live on and keep the basic farm going…. If you sell now, the cow price drops because everybody else sells. When you have to buy back in, everybody else will be doing the same thing and the price will be high.
“After that, it will be another year without income because you still have no calves to sell.”
Audet said that a rancher buying back into the system wouldn’t be able to replace his herd with one of nearly the same size because of interim losses and higher-priced replacement animals.
The result would be a reduced calf crop, which wouldn’t provide enough income for many middle- and smaller-sized cattle producers.
He said another important factor is that “a cow is a cow is just not true. You spend years developing a herd for qualities individual to each producer. I can’t just introduce new cows to these coulees and expect them to be able to get around. This is tough country and our cattle are bred for it and suited to it. You build a good herd over time, in some cases lifetimes.”
Kathleen McKinley raises Herefords with her husband Warren near Manyberries, Alta. They are keeping their cattle, but will reduce the herd enough to meet feed supplies.
Their rolling grassland is now grey. The normally yellow-brown plants are gone. What is left is covered with dust.
Like most of the region, the only yellow comes from stunted cereal crops left in the fields to be grazed or trap elusive winter snow.
“You spend a lifetime building a herd,” she said. “You sell it, you can’t buy it back. Most farmers and ranchers are too old to want to start it all over again.”
Audet is gambling that it will rain again. He will keep his herd, take advantage of a provincial drought-feeding program and have the hay trucked 950 kilometres from Melfort, Sask.
Bosch has culled his herd by 20 cows to 150 and may cull some more when he gets them back to the ranch headquarters.
“Like everybody else, we aren’t going to keep (cows) that are not the best or most efficient,” he said.
“Cow prices are down a dime (per pound) already and I expect it may go further as the heavy culling starts. You don’t want to be wasting any feed just in case it doesn’t rain next year.”
For now, the Saskatchewan rancher said he will “watch the dust blow and buy some alfalfa. We’ll chop straw, feed whatever we have to get the cattle through the winter.”
Both men say they know keeping cattle over the winter on high-priced feed is a gamble, but other options don’t seem like good hands to play either.
