Circuses and zoos must be having a skinny time now that farm folks have taken to raising most of the exotic animals and birds relied on to draw crowds.
When we were kids we’d rarely see an ostrich or a llama or a camel. Now you don’t take a second look when you see one of these creatures dozing in a Prairie pasture.
When I first started work with The Western Producer, the classified section had only a few listings for cattle, pigs, sheep and horses.
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Kochia has become a significant problem for Prairie farmers
As you travel through southern Saskatchewan and Alberta, particularly in areas challenged by dry growing conditions, the magnitude of the kochia problem is easy to see.
When farmers first started importing Charolais cattle, that opened the floodgates. The newspaper’s advertising staff used to come to my office and ask in an embarrassed tone:
“Umm Keith, could you tell me how to spell Pinzgauer? And should rheas be listed under livestock or poultry?”
Since I’ve gone out to pasture myself, the animal and bird kingdom on the Prairies has left me far behind. Recently I saw an advertisement for a Buelingo (black and red belts available). I guess with the price of breeding cattle these days it would help to have a belt thrown in.
The exploding list of breeds and types of animals reflects the need of farm people to make a living and if it takes fainting goats to do it, let’s have fainting goats.
The difficulty is that no one knows what will survive the first enthusiasm and what will not.
It’s like these chain letters that crop up occasionally. Often the only beneficiary is the one who starts it and by the time you and I get into it, no one is interested any more. Now all we need is for someone out at Camrose to start breeding elephants, and zoos will be dust.
