Hay

[dballan]

redcountry as far as I know all the feed that came west was good feed. The loads of feed were managed by a group and they were drawn for by a lottery process, so that only those that needed it received it.

An I am sure they appreciated it very much and your willingness to help out in a crisis.

[dballan]

Not only do we appreciate you sharing your hay with us, your curlers are a blessing, too.

www.Foldaway.ca

[dballan]

Yes, congratulations to the curlers and everyone else who did Canada proud at the Olympics

[cowman]

Actually quite a bit of the hay that came in was pretty bad but it was the thought that counts, right?
I don't know of anyone who actually got any lottery hay but of course there were lots of stories around about how people abused the situation etc.?
A whole lot of hay and straw came in from the eastern prairies, loaded with fusarium, to which the Klein government turned a blind eye! There was a lot of straw baled up in west central alberta that the farmers were asking outrageous prices for. A lot of cattle went down the road rather than pay those robbers...and they ended up burning the straw the next year!
You sure saw the best and the worst of your neighbors!

[cowman]

exactly cowman, and if those who milked the system and took advantage of fellow producers when they were in a tough spot, ended up burning their straw or having to sell the hay for half the price the next year serves them right.

The hay producers that are still in business are the ones that treated their customers right and have retained their market.

[dballan]

Our policy is to sell hay lower than the highest prices and higher than the lowest prices as the market rides the rails of the roller coaster. When we take our poorer quality hay to the auction mart, the buyer decides what it's worth and pays accordingly. Customer retention is critical for the long run. Not only do prices play a role but quality guarantee has a lot to play in the equation as well.

[topper]

Hey Cowman: That has to be about the tenth time I've heard you whining about that fusarium infected straw that made it's way to Alberta during the drought. Now I'm kind of wondering how you have come to this conclusion. Did you have some of it tested? Or maybe just tested down at the coffee shop,lol. You forgot to mention that it wasn't tested for rats either. Wouldn't want Alberta to lose their rat free status!!!

[topper]

I assure you cowman isn't the only producer concerned with fusarium. There have been numerous resolutions put forward at the past three Agricultural Service Board Conventions regarding fusariam.

[nicolaas]

when its dry, expect to pay more for straw. If you are having a hard time buying hay, and your pastures are all droughted out, then obviously the grain farmers will be hurting with decreased yeilds. Therefore if the price of hay is high, then straw will be as well. I don't think people should get too complacent and assume that their neighbors can continue to subsidize their cattle operations with cheap feed in drought years. They have to make a living too. During the last province wide drought 4 or so years ago I silaged up a few quarters of barley to feed my cows. It was the first time I used silage, and I will never go back. On a average year, I can grow enough oat silage for 320 cows on 1/4 section,(supplemented with 800 straw bales) versus 800 acres of hay land. It works for me, I'm sure other people look at their own situation differently. If you are going to be dependent on other people for your feed, then you are at their mercy during times of low supply. Look at it this way, they probably had a lot less product to sell, so they weren't making all that much money unless they are under irrigation. Those would be the guys making out like bandits.

[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.