Hay West

[cowman]

In the last issue of the Western Producer they had a story about a woman from Innisfail Alta. who got some hay from the lottery. Apparently it was pretty rugged stuff and two seperate vets told her, don't feed it to your cows! Another woman from Blackfalls had got some that was pretty moldy and they wouldn't be able to feed it to pregnant cows. Now it seems to me if it cost close to $400/ton to get it here maybe it would have made more sense to just leave it in Ontario?
There was a figure of one million extra tons of hay was needed to pull the Alberta cow herd through this winter. Now that obviously isn't going to happen! Once again the government is way behind on this! They need to get a pile of cows killed and NOW! I suspect soon the rush will be on and there won't be enough killing capacity to get the job done. Then they will wring their hands and say how awful it is when the starvation stories start pouring in.
Here is an absolutely absurb situation. A farmer I know owns land right on the border of Lacombe county and Red Deer county. Owns land on both sides of the separating road. Has a small feedlot in Lacombe county. Now because Lacombe county has a zero tolerance for fusarium he can't feed corn there. But in Red Deer county it is basically wide open! So he intends to run the steers across the road every morning and evening,into Red Deer county, to feed them their corn! Then back across the road to sleep and eat their roughage! Is this crazy or what?

[hgb]

There is a lot corn going into the county of Lacombe, just no trains being unloaded there. Agricore United was going to use there Lacombe facility for unloading the corn cars, until the zero-tolerance came in, AU was planning on giving the county the names of all corn buyers, so the feildman could monitor the fusarium situation. Now the cars are being spotted outside of the county and trucks hauling it in to producers yards,I beleive a system that the county could have monitored would have been better.

[cowman]

Thanks for that information! I will pass it on to my freind. I don't think he had ever really got serious yet about this years feeders. He has to feed cattle because he is caught up in the old tax game.