by Karli Flinta-Murphy
Some producers in the north Interlake and Westlake areas have not made a single bale of hay all summer. Others are culling harder this fall than they ever have before because they are leery of the fact they may not have enough feed for their herds come spring. If producers were lucky enough to get some hay put up, the quality is terrible. And when producers are saying this year is more devastating than when BSE hit, there is no doubt frustration out there. This is all a direct result of the unprecedented amount of rainfall producers faced this year.
Right now Albert Omer farms north of Fisher Branch, but not for long. Omer, who downsized his herd after BSE, plans to sell his entire herd within the next month. “There’s no bloody way I am sinking anymore money into those cows,” he said. “It’s a business, but it’s not a prosperous business anymore.” Omer has been farming his whole life.
Omer doesn’t have enough feed to winter his cattle after rains destroyed any chance of having a productive hay crop and with the price of hay, he doesn’t have the cash to buy so instead he will liquidate his herd. “I don’t know how anyone can afford to do this when they aren’t breaking even when they sell their calves,” he said.
Ken Hoff of Tribar Ranch at Peonan Point only got 25 percent of his hay crop up this year and had to source hay from three different places. Thankfully, he had a pretty good carryover from last year to help feed his 750 cows. “We are looking at $50,000 to $70,000 in hay purchases. We’re going to cull down about double what we usually do,” he said, adding he usually sells off 50 to 60 cull cows per year, but this year is will be over 100.
Much of Hoff’s land is lowland, which normally produces a lot of pasture, but with the downpours he had hundreds of acres that were just water and cattails. Pastures were lost and calf weights are down. Since June, Hoff said his ranch had over 30 inches of rain.
To make sure he has enough feed, he checked out the cost of grain, pellets and feed mixes to find the best bang for his buck. What he decided is that buying good quality hay and mixing it with the poor quality hay he put up, is the best thing for his operation. “It costs just as much in transportation charges to haul in poor quality hay as it does good because most of it comes from a long ways away. We may as well bring in good (quality hay),” he said, adding he never got any hay up without rain affecting its quality.
“With cow numbers going down in the U.S. and here in Canada, in two years when our economy turns around and people start wanting to eat beef again, we should see astronomical prices like never before because there is going to be a shortage of beef. So if anybody can hang on for two years, and I know I have been saying that to the boys up here since ‘03 and it’s been five years now, but I think now more than ever if you can just hang in there, our ship should come in,” he said.
But there are a lot who can’t hold on and like Omer, they will get out of cattle all together.
Hoff is hoping for a long fall and a mild winter so it will be easier on his feed supply because he doesn’t want to buy any more than he has already committed to. “We’re not doing anything radically different, just trying to operate more efficiently right from the start and there’s very little we can trim to make us more efficient. Sometimes you can make a mistake when you try radical things and it backfires on you. (Feeding hay) for us is proven and it’s just a matter of getting through this,” he said. One reason he said he will be able to survive perhaps better than others is because on his 10,000 acre ranch, he has a very low overhead with the native pasture. Not buying fertilizer and not having the costs associated with breaking up the land and seeding helps.
Like Hoff, Guy Johnson also has an optimistic attitude and he doesn’t want producers to give up. His farm in Eddystone was slammed with 42 inches of rain since the beginning of July and he said he has neighbours who were affected even more. “We were quite dry this spring. I was thinking of buying hay because it was so dry then it started to rain. It affected everything,” he said. “Our hay production is way down and our quality is terrible. Our weights coming off pasture were way down. It’s just not been a good year.”
Johnson got about half of what he usually gets from his hay lands, but it was all tame hay because none of his native pastures survived. He has since bought hay and baled and bought straw. He looked at hay as far away as Swan River, but found some closer to home, which was still more than 80 miles away. He will be feeding grain to make up the nutritional difference for his 450 cows. He will also have his replacement heifers custom fed and plans to cull heavily this year.
“Let’s not get too far down. Things can change so quickly. I tell guys not to get so far in the dumps that they dump their cattle. Be a good marketer because I would hate to go through this and six months down the road have it be a profitable business after guys got out of it too soon. This still is a viable business,” he said.
Although he doesn’t have a rain gauge, Robert Mankewich, said he had more than 20 inches pour down on his farm north of Fisher Branch. He said he was very fortunate this year because he was able to make about 50 percent of the hay he normally puts up for his 180 cows. “I know guys that only put up 15 to 20 percent—some even less then that,” he said. Mankewich bought hay as the summer went on, while scrounging everything he could get. He also had some carryover from last year. Early in July, he sourced hay from a local broker. The hay was reasonably weathered, but it was close and the price was decent. Although it’s three or four-year-old hay, he is going to run it through a shredder and if he feels his cattle aren’t getting the proper nutrients, he is going to supplement it with barley or grain. “I am going to cull here as soon as it freezes because it is so freakin’ wet. We can’t even move cattle around. They are on the pasture and will stay there until it freezes,” he said, adding he will be culling higher than normal this fall.
“There are a lot of guys really frustrated, including myself,” he said. “There were a lot of producers out there hanging on by a thread and this year’s going to kill them.” Mankewich considers himself lucky. He made it work this time and he is going to ride it out for one more year, but doesn’t know if he will be able to do so for much longer if these conditions continue.
Arne Lindell also considers himself and his 220 head of cattle lucky. Not all the hay he made was poor quality. But even though he put up some hay, he now can’t get it off his fields. “It’s wetter now than it was before. You might get on the field once, but you aren’t going there a second time,” he said about the 30 inches of rain his land received at his Eriksdale farm. Lindell is waiting until it freezes before he can get the rest of his hay off. “There is water where there has never been water before. There’s more water here now than there is in a normal spring.” The hay crop he couldn’t salvage is drowned out and it will have to be reseeded. “No one can afford it, we’ve lost money every year since BSE and we can’t afford to lose any more, we’re done losing,” Lindell said. He’s still deciding whether he will sell some cattle this fall. He’s gained two weeks already where he’d normally be feeding because of the weather, so he’ll gain some hay there. “I’m not planning on selling any more than I normally would cull.” Lindell is close to having enough feed. If the conditions are ideal, he should be okay, and that’s what he’s hoping for. But if he has to sell some of his cows to make it, he will.
Susie Wilkinson’s son, Tyler, desperately wants to continue the family tradition as a fifth generation rancher but his parents are worried. “How is he ever going to ranch and how are we ever going to stay here with him, I’m worried it’s just not going to happen,” she said, adding she is trying to stay positive, but is finding that difficult.
Wilkinson and husband Vince, ranch at Eddystone and this year they didn’t get alfalfa off many of their fields because it was too wet. “I felt so bad for some of our cows because we had nine hoof rot heifers who had nowhere to go but up on these mounds of pushed up brush because it was the only way to get out of the water for weeks on end,” she said. “There are people in really bad situations around here and I feel just sick for them. I don’t know how they are going to get through this.” The Wilkinson’s cattle are still on pasture because they rotationally graze and moved the cattle into their last paddocks later than usual, which will push their feeding window back. She said they only had half the amount of hay required to feed their 500 head over the winter and had to source a lot of straw and second cut alfalfa from Dauphin and Ste. Rose.
Campbell Forsyth is waiting for it to freeze so he can do something with the 200 acres of corn he planted in the spring. “We’ll get at it one way or another even if we have to graze the cattle on it,” he said. Forsyth said he invested $280/acre with plans of turning it into silage, and because of all the inputs, needs to make use of it. “You have to feed your cows, you can’t let them starve,” he said. “There is not enough hay. There is no wild hay and only a little bit of alfalfa,” the Eriksdale farmer said. Forsyth’s farm had almost 30 inches of rainfall this summer and if all else fails, he said at least he has crop insurance.
Brad Thorlacius, general manager of the Ashern Auction Mart says he is seeing some producers culling really hard, even up to 50 per cent of their herds because they don’t have the money to buy feed for them. “The worst part of a heavy cull is that you sell half your cows to buy feed for the other half and then will only have half the calves to sell the following year,” he said, adding that many producers are getting some late hay off their fields and that may help get them through.
Thorlacius said some producers just want to get out of the business all together because they are tired of the industry, but that financially, can’t give cattle away. Many producers are hiring custom operators to feed their cows, but they don’t want to calve them out.
East of Ashern, all native hay is under water and everything is really wet. Up in the Gypsumville area, even the pastures were affected. “Quite a few guys are short or just have enough feed if they don’t keep their calves. Guys that background their calves aren’t doing it this year,” he said. Producers short on feed hope to wean their calves and keep their cows out on pasture as long as possible, especially since this is the time when their nutrient requirements are lower. There have been many lessons learned on how to feed cows cheaper, he said, adding there have been some wrecks in the past by feeding straw due to nutrient deficiencies, but it’s all a learning curve.
Make believe program
Manitoba Agriculture, Food and Rural Initiatives (MAFRI) with assistance from Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada released the Manitoba Forage Assistance Program (MFAP) to respond to the feed shortage across the province. Omer calls the MFAP a “make believe program” and says it’s just “more rope to hang ourselves with.” The MFAP is supposed to provide producers financial help to access feed by covering transportation costs, mirroring the program established during the 2003 drought. Being in the freight business himself, Omer knows what the costs are and said the program is using old freight prices and doesn’t reflect the current conditions. He said farmers have to pay for transportation costs anyway even with the help from the government.
Hoff gives the government credit that they’re trying to help, but so far, what the provincial and federal governments are kicking in isn’t enough to pick up the slack of the losses that producers have already suffered. “We thought in ‘03 when BSE hit, that it was devastating, but compared to this year, for us, it was a walk in the park,” he said, adding calf prices were lower this year than they were in 2003.
Guy Johnson said the program will not do much to keep up the provincial cow herd numbers. “(The package) is very, very bad. I know the government can’t do anything about market forces, but at some point we have to decide that keeping the cow herds up is a really good idea.”
Mankewich asked, “What assistance?” He bought straw from Argyle and by the time the bills are paid, it is still going to cost him money for freight even with the package from the Manitoba Government. “As far as I am concerned, I don’t think they did anything,” he said referring to both provincial and federal government assistance.
Susie Wilkinson would love to sit down with Manitoba Agriculture Minister Rosann Wowchuk and ask her if she really understands what conditions ranchers are currently facing. She also is thinking of writing her MLA and encourages other producers to do the same. “We’re really disappointed with our government right now. The hay is expensive and you still have to pay for half your freight to get it to you. You can’t find cheap feed or good quality feed and people want $50 a bale for dust. The AgriStability payment doesn’t work in our favour either. We were told we aren’t getting anything.”
Arne Lindell summed up what most producers think by saying, “We don’t need any more government loans, we just need to be paid fairly for what we are doing.”
Test your feed
Rodger Sheldon, Farm Production Extension Specialist - Pasture and Rangeland with MAFRI, said when it comes to winter-feeding programs, producers need to put a solid plan together. Lining up the proper feed is a big part of the plan, but this year, with the costs being sky high and not a lot of extra, good quality feed around, it is difficult. “Having a plan also helps when working with your bank because now you have something solid to show them.”
Sheldon wants producers to know that their local GO Centres provide a service and are completely confidential. “There’s not a lot of money out there and feed is 50 to 60 per cent of your overall costs,” he said, adding that putting a feed test together is crucial in the plan to know whether your cows will be in good shape by spring, given what you have to work with. Sheldon cautions to watch for mold because some producers pushed the envelope this year by putting hay up tough. Fusarium in wheat and barley also needs to be monitored. “Make sure feeds are mixed properly because the chance of mixing feeds that contain both mold and fusarium could cause a lot of problems at a time when we don’t need any more.”
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