Expensive cattle feed a concern for ranchers

“Prices have been increasing since the drought started last year there’s certainly a shortage of feed grain, we had very poor crops, we had fairly large exports,” Brain Perillat, manager and senior analyst at CanFax said.

Expensive feed prices have many negative impacts, including less beef.

“You could be looking this coming fall at increase prices because of reduced production,” Lyle Taylor, general manager of Medicine Hat Feeding Company, said.

Taylor says this stress on ranchers is also causing them to question if they want to continue.

“This could be the straw that breaks the camel’s back and we might see a mass exodus in the ranching community if it stays dry this summer it’ll be very, very serious,” Taylor said.

Even though southern Alberta started 2021 in fairly good moisture conditions, more heat and less rainfall in the summer caused a drought. This resulted in poor crops and poor livestock conditions for feed availability.

Agro-climatic specialist Trevor Hadwen says it’s a little too early to tell how this year’s conditions will be.

“We’ve got some moisture in and on the soil right now,” Hadwen said. “Not enough to replenish the supply from last year but we’re hopeful moving forward.”

For Lutz’s, he’s also hopeful conditions will be better in 2022 but in the meantime, he’s afraid there will be a lot of thin cattle this year.

“They’re not being fed the amount they should be and the second is the cost to feed them,” Lutz said. “If you do want to feed them, the amount of debt you have to take on to stay in the ranching business.”

The concern and stress among ranchers and feeding companies don’t seem to be going away any time soon.

by Teagan Rasche

Expensive cattle feed a concern for ranchers

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