Brand Inspection/livestock permits

[grassfarmer]

What a ridiculous system we have got into with this new livestock permit system in Alberta. We ship breeding bulls out of province so the procedure is for me to fill in a manifest with origin, destination, description, brands, dates etc. Take this with the bull to an inspection site (usually an auction) where we will load the bull onto a liner to take it to destination.
So we need a brand inspector which is always a challenge to find at the short notice the truckers often give you.
So the inspector arrives, copies part of the information off the manifest onto a form and adds his signature. He also takes a casual look at the animal to see if there is an obvious brand. Then you pay him - something like $2.10.

I also have developed a useful arrangement with a business in Red Deer that ships hogs east to Manitoba and they often have room on the truck for a bull or two. Catch is if I use them I get charged the "offsite" brand inspection fee which is $21 despite the premises literally being next door to the auction mart /brand office. Nothing but a money grab!

What really gets me is that no worthwhile information is collected in the process - just part of the info that was on the manifest, no reading of CCIA tags that would at least constitute the beginning of a traceability system. Just a dumb, paper shuffling exercise based on the 1800s practice of branding.

I really grudge paying $21 to get a livestock permit to ship one bull.

[ALLFARMER]

Don't sweat the small stuff. Get past the idealism and come make $800/day in the patch.

I remember hiring a D6 cat 17 years ago for $85/hour. Now I make over $50/hour just for my time. Or find a frac crew that needs water. I heard of a guy who brought a farm for 300k and that year sold the water in his dugout for 160k. He was looking forward to run off fill it back up to pay off the rest of the farm.

My 19 year old step son who didn't feel the need to finish high school now is on track to make 100,000 this year. Slightly more than I paid him to help out on the farm.

[ALLFARMER]

As the people who rented my land enjoy another drought year.

[grassfarmer]

It's like the new "Alberta Advantage" is DUMB, Harper would be proud of you. Short term greed, zero sustainability, living the life of kings, squandering resources and the environment like there is no tomorrow.
You maybe think $800 a day is a lot of money but will it be enough for your kids or grandkids to buy the drinking water to sustain life after we've contaminated or permanently removed from the water cycle this essential of life?

To quote the Cree prophesy:
“Only after the last tree has been cut down. Only after the last river has been poisoned. Only after the last fish has been caught. Only then will you find that money cannot be eaten.”

[kato]

Here's the real kicker. Once that bull gets to Manitoba, unless he ends up in another truck going back to Alberta or Sask., no one will ever inspect that brand again. We don't do that here, except for cattle heading your way.

[grassfarmer]

Nothing wrong with that kato - at least you aren't paying and supporting a useless bureaucracy that doesn't achieve anything beyond what the farmer fills in on his manifest.
You'd think at least they would have a hand held scanner to capture ccia tag data. Even our vet does that when semen checking bulls just to try and show willing and keep up with the technology.

[kato]

Other than with people who mix cattle in pastures, and members of feeder associations, branding is not that common in Manitoba. We buy feeders through an association, so they need branding, but even though we have a registered brand, and a branding iron, we haven't branded any of our own cattle since we quit using community pastures. They have rfid, management tags, and metal tags with our name on them. That's more id than most people carry.

It seems odd that after all the millions of dollars, headaches and money spent on this rfid business, that they are still wanting brands. What's the point of going through all this red tape and bother if they aren't going to make use of it and at least save some work and discomfort for the cattle by dropping the brands. They need to make up their minds.

Nobody in our province seems to miss having branded cattle.

[grassfarmer]

I think they do need to make up their minds.
The way it's heading now is the same way as Europe - fool around with the possibility of using electronic tags for so long something crops up and the Government steps in overnight and implements a stupid, bureaucratic paper system that is totally unmanageable.

[DGoodrich]

Not too often to I disagree with you Iain, but on this subject, I think you're missing the point of inspections. It's a system that was originally started to prevent theft or catch thieves. And since I was one for 3 years I can tell you from experience that alot more livestock is stolen on the prairies than you think. It's in the millions of dollars every year, in cattle and horses that LIS and it's inspectors recover for people like you.

And branding may seem archaic, but I caught a couple guys trying to sell their neighbors bulls, and the only reason I caught it was a light hair brand. The rightful owners original CCIA tag had been removed and a new one put in, so the scanner at the market brought it up as belonging to the thief trying to sell it. The archaic brand was the evidence that showed he was selling someone else's bull.

So before you get too brash with your statements, think about the chance that maybe one day you'll have one of those bulls go missing, and a brand inspector somewhere just might be your best bet at finding it.

[grassfarmer]

That implies that the system of reading brands works. We bought lots of branded dispersal cows and when I ship them as culls I'm supposed to provide a bill of sale indicating where I purchased them. Quite often the dispersal sale bill of sale from the auction didn't include the brand on the cattle I'd got so in theory I didn't have proof it was mine. I always showed them the correct bill of sale for the cattle and pointed out that the brands didn't match. They just shrugged their shoulders and paid me anyway.

On the theft front I guess I'll just take that chance Darcy as I've never branded anything and don't intend to start. We've farmed livestock for hundreds of years in this family and never had an animal stolen so maybe we just have better neighbours - or keep a closer eye on our stock.

[kato]

Your family must have been in a pretty law abiding pert of Scotland. My highland ancestors made cattle stealing into an art. Lol.

We have an old family joke that we got kicked out of Scotland for stealing sheep. When we went to Scotland and met up with family there, we found out that this is what they still say about anyone who moves away or in to the area. That has to be the longest running joke ever. 185 years and counting.

But back to the topic. The brand inspectors in Manitoba only look at cattle heading out of province. Auction marts are the only places I know of that they work out of. I suppose some of the bigger buyers have access to them, but not your ordinary producers. I don't see branding becoming any more prevalent in the future. The last time we sold branded feeders, we talked with the inspector. He spends more time looking for brands than recording them. I think that day ours were the only ones that were branded out of almost a thousand head.

[littledoggie]

With the price of livestock these days, having a brand is insurance. One year we had some idiot operator leave a locked gate to a lease site open and our whole year's income wandered out and scattered around the countryside. Right when we were haying too. The yearlings were not branded that year. It took us the better part of a week to round them all up. Yeah they had CCIA tags, but what good does that do if they wander into someone's yard who is an opportunist?

I kept a log of the time we spent and sent the leaseholder a bill. They did pay it - but what a pain in the ass that was and stressful knowing they weren't branded (or dna'd)

[T.N.T.]

$800 a day,isn't enough money to make me even think about being somebodys full time toby.I know a few guys that went out to the patch with money signs in there eye's,yes they made lots of money and where are they now alcoholics and coke heads,but there still in the patch and thats all that matters to them.It's a shame because some of those guys were really good guys before they went to the patch,now when you talk to them it's like talking to a shell and their minds are fried.Yup good thing they made all that money so they can enjoy retirement,to bad a lot of them won't enjoy retirement because they will be dead!!

[ALLFARMER]

Talked with a picker operator today, asked him why he had no swamper...he says o he went home a few days ago but for what their paying me thats ok I can climb off and hitch the lines myself. He makes $1400/day.

Drugs & booze are not prevalent with the guys I work with. These guys have nice vehicles, buy themselves what ever toys they like. 2 guys just bought new Harleys. Just got word we will now have to do drug testing to keep Encana happy...no one at the shop was concerned at all.

Kind of strange to be in a shop where at pay day they all stand around and cant wipe the smiles of their faces.