Hay

[nicolaas]

Nobody questions the right for every producer to make a profit as best they can.
I have never complained about the price I had to pay for good hay during the drought years, but I do have a real issue with hay being sold as good quality when in fact it is moldy, and all stems !!!

In fact the producer that sold it, and the trucker that hauled it made good money for feed that otherwise would have been set on fire in the field.

None of they hay I bought during the drought was grown on irrigated land, it all came from the peace region.

I don't call my purchasing hay a dependency....the sellers are always more than willing to sell their product so I guess they have a dependency as well, so it evens out !!

Silage is the way to go if a producer has the manpower to get the silage put up and equipment to feed it.

[cowman]

topper: Actually the municipality I live in was very proactive on the fusarium problem and monitored very carefully all straw, hay, and grain entering the municipality? They did test every load coming in, including US corn? There was a lot of really dirty straw(up to 75% infected) that came in and they have a record of exactly where it landed. They have continued to work with Alberta Agriculture(Lacombe) monitoring these sites and while there has not been an outbreak of headblight there have been a couple of home grown seed samples that have tested positive! Also soil samples have proven that Fusarium gramminearum is present in the ground! So will we get an outbreak? Just a matter of time and conditions being right.
The Alberta government broke its own laws by allowing fusarium infected material into Alberta. They clearly sacrificed the fusarium free status we had in central Alberta to save the cattle industry? They have since stuck the grainfarmer with the cost of controlling it through mandatory seed tests with the producer picking up the bill. They have put our malt industry at risk as well as our hog industry.
A simple test, done before the hay, straw, grain left the area it was shipped from could have kept out fusarium, but the Alberta government did not insist on it and so today we have this ticking time bomb waiting in our fields.

[topper]

Geesh Cowman; you just about have me wanting to go out to the feedlot and get that dirty straw out of there. I put fusarium in the same column as Anaplasmosis and Bluetongue. If they where going to be a problem they would have been in your area years ago. No municipal border is going to stop a disease that thrives under it's conditions. I hate to see you guys out of pocket for a fusarium test but you know there are a lot of us out here that are out of pocket for BSE and we have never had a case. So I guess life is not always fair.

[cowman]

Topper: Well no we wouldn't have had a problem actually for a long time...if we hadn't brought in infected feed? Fusarium Gramminearum had been moving westward at a rate of around three miles a year...would have taken a long time to get here.
It is true we don't usually have ideal conditions for fusarium to grow where we would get a headblight disaster. Of course you realize headblight is only one of the problems with Fusarium Gramminearum? Damage to seedlings can be devastating.
The point here is the Alberta government violated its own laws? The Pest Control Act. And now the producer gets to pay for that?
You have to pay the price for BSE and so do I! I never fed my cows any dead animal parts. I never said it was okay to bring in dirty meat meal from Britain. When the day comes when there is a live animal test available I am pretty sure none of my cows will have BSE...well if the science is right?
The fact is the Alberta government could have controlled fusarium gramminearum from entering the province, but chose not to. A quick solution has become a long term threat. Fusarium gramminearum has shown it can survive and reproduce here under adverse conditions.

[ALLFARMER]

Don't forget about the train loads of fuzarium infected corn corn that came here during the drought. I know some made its way to Westlock and the local paper printed pictures of it spilled were they unloaded the cars.

[topper]

Cowman: I'm sure your cattle are as healthy as ours. My point is that the east didn't draw a border around your area when the BSE outbreak occurred there but you seem to want to draw lines around other areas of the country when you feel it is to your advantage. I have never had fusarium in my crops either but I am getting labeled as a dirty straw producer. I see a lot of Alberta bulls selling into this area. Maybe I'm missing something here but it seems like a double standard.

[cowman]

Well I don't think the problem was feed from the eastern prairies...just infected feed? A simple pre shipment test would have solved the problem? Why didn't the Alberta government ask for that? And without a doubt the majority of eastern prairie feed coming into Alberta during the drought was clean.
Feedlot alley in southern Alberta has been bringing in fusarium infected grain from the eastern prairies and the USA for quite awhile now and FG is firmly established there now. Halting the spread of disease and other pests is the reason they brought in the Pest Control act...all over Canada? But if you ignore the law...well what does that say? So much for the law!
I think a lot of the areas where fusarium is established don't see it as a big problem. They have learned to live with it and to a certain extent control it? Maybe we are just behind the times out here? But the fact is if we could keep it out then it would cost us less and our product would have been worth more?
I think someone floated the idea that certain areas shouldn't be included in the BSE thing? It didn't float because the CFIA said no, real quick, and besides the USDA had its own agenda and wouldn't endorse that? But in reality maybe the proponents had a point? The fact is all BSE cases have been in Alberta, with maybe a Saskatchewan connection.
Oh and by the way, those B-trains hauling eastern fusarium infected feed into feedlot alley, return with clean grain for Manitobas hog barns! Hogs do not tolerate fusarium infection well!