slaughter cow numbers

[hgb]

A feildman for VJV Auction Market, at Ponoka, mentioned they had an extremely large run of slaughter cows this week. He thought alot of these cows had lost calves in the the past 3 weeks of cold weather. I was wondering if there had been an increase of slaughter cow numbers through the rest of the auction markets.

[gopher]

I believe there is more cows this year with a one way ticket but I'm not sure about the numbers going through the auction markets. It has been a tough calving season around here. ( Lethbridge and west ) My relatives in the Pincher Creek area have not only been fighting the cold but they also had 6 feet of snow. The calf losses are high and lots of frozen ears & tails. It finally warmed up here about 3 days ago and we were to start calving next week but we had 4 calves today!

[cowman]

This sort of thing seems to happen on a regular basis. We get a few nice winters and everyone sneaks the calving dates up. Then a hard cold spring and a lot of dead calves. Here in central Alberta there is a lot of talk about frozen ears and calves that were weak. We have a fair bit of snow cover(probably the best in years) and when it goes it could be pretty sloppy. I would suspect scours could be a problem. It was a funny winter...mild but never warm enough to get a thaw in Jan. or Feb. If you want to calve in Jan. Feb. or even March you should have some facilities.