Ontario hay

[cowman]

The outpouring of concern by Ontario hay producers for the west is truly appreciated. But if you really want to help come out and buy our cows. You would not believe the quality, young cows available at meat prices.
I think people would feel so much better if they knew their good cows were going into another herd rather than to slaughter.
Yesterday I was in at the mart to take my weekly beating on my yearlings! I could not believe the quality of some of these cows. There was one herd of black cows that were truly phenominal...big stout black calves around 600 lbs.! I asked the manager if they would be slaughtered. He said in all likelyhood, yes. It is a damned shame!

[carebear300]

Yes cowman it truly is a shame to see those good breeding cows going to slaughter. It takes a life time to build a good herd and then mother nature comes along and throws a monkey wrench into everything. Around here it comes back to the same old story, when I started raising cows(my nieces say about the start of the civil war) the old guys always preached to have at least a third of your grass left every year in the pasture to take care of that dam dry year. They also told us to try and keep at least half a years hay ahead, dam hard to do when it is dry. The old guys used to cut down some to try and make sure they were able to stick to these guidelines. Nowadays we have to eat up every spear of grass just to try and make a living. When we get a year like this we are all in big trouble, have to start paying the farmer more so that he can weather these bad times. Even as good as the cattle business has been the last ten years it takes one pile of calves to buy a new baler.

[dalek]

Cowdude the hay might be held up a while now. CFIA in their infinite wisdom have decided it all has to be fumigated for cereal leaf beetle, so the volunteers organizing it will have to find a way of paying for it or someone to donate the fumigation.