Feed

[SCS]

Oh my how the cows are consuming the bales now, not counting yet but always a concern!

[SADIE]

I am south Saskatoon area around Gardiner Dam. I made my move late Nov early Dec and sourced some extra feed. This is an old irrigation area with "no Hay left"-----already last fall finding any good quality feed one had to search and pay some mileage to get some into this area.

This cold weather snap. My cow herd is looking good but 'Dido" going through feed.

Could be serious issues if long winter persists into April and May. High valued cattle and apparently not a lot of available source of feed.

Check the Western Producer. Years ago rows and columns of Hay for Sale. Now it is short listing---listing mostly straw available.

[kato]

Our corn field was done about 10 days ago, and the girls are really chowing down on the hay here too. Could be the minus 30 plus windchill that just won't go away.

One time many years ago we had a terrible feed shortage that made Hubby vow "never again", so we always try and build a good cushion for a longer than average winter. We should be good. Especially since there are a couple of hundred auction mart riff raff feeders missing from the pens this winter. May have extra feed to sell, but we will wait until closer to spring to make that decision. We didn't get the main bunch of cows to pasture until well into June last year, so we want to make sure a repeat of that is covered.

[grassfarmer]

It is quite remarkable with the greatly reduced cow herd how short feed can be across a lot of the country. I guess an indication of how much hay land has been broken up? Also there seems to be a heck of a lot of hay/greenfeed/straw being bought by the hay exporters like the compressing plant at Olds.

[Happytrails]

I agree that feed supplies seem tight all over. And the prices! Bedding straw is going for 80-90 per ton.

[grassfarmer]

It looks like there are thousands of big square straw bales sitting at the Olds hay plant. Don't know where that would be getting shipped to.