For Alberta's beef industry, it's been one bad break after another. "We just can't keep losing," Busby area cattle breeder Jill Careless says with a sigh. For farmers across northern and central Alberta who raise breeding cows to produce steers for slaughter, skyrocketing hay prices this year are the icing on a bitter cake that's been nearly a decade in the making.
Many are radically scaling back their operations, and according to some auction houses, a growing number are selling off their entire herds."We're seeing huge numbers of guys selling down (their herds) because of the cost of feed," said Gary Jarvis of Triple J Livestock, an auction house in Westlock. "Some are selling them all."Jill and James Careless have auctioned off one-third of the 120 breeding cows on their farm, 50 km northwest of Edmonton, and plan to sell more this fall. Jill says no other breeders bought their cows, even though they were in their reproductive prime. "Every one of them has gone for slaughter," she says sadly. "It's heartbreaking to sell them like that because they're still good, producing cows." This year's bitterly cold spring, followed by two months of abnormally dry weather, has decimated the hay crop and tripled the price of bales sold on the open market. Round bales weighing 1,100 lbs. sold for $115 each at Ardrossan Auction Service yesterday. Auctioneer Peter Pedgerachny said they would have sold for $35 to $40 a bale last year. Meanwhile, the farmers' own hay fields are producing a fraction of what they need for the winter. The Carelesses' fields have yielded a quarter of what they did last year. "We can't afford to keep (our cows)," says Jill. "A cow will eat approximately seven bales in a normal winter. But this year, we'll have to start feeding two months earlier, so that means eight or nine bales."
At about $100 per bale, she explains, it will cost $800 to $900 to feed each cow over the winter, never mind each cow's calf. Last winter feed costs would have been about one-third of that."We're looking at huge losses, and we just can't justifiy keeping them," she says. The Carelesses have been there before. They kept all their cows through the drought that ended in 2002, incurring huge financial losses in the hope they could make their money back in the following years. "Then there was the BSE crisis in 2003. Prices have never recovered," she says. But there is some hope on the horizon, at least for this year's hay crop
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