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Established 1938 ISSN 1196-8923 Cattlemen Editorial Editor: Gren Winslow 1666 Dublin Avenue, Winnipeg, MB R3H 0H1 (204) 944-5753 Fax (204) 944-5416 Email: gren@fbcpublishing.com Field Editor: Debbie Furber Box 1168, Tisdale, SK S0E 1T0 (306) 873-4360 Fax (306) 873-4360 Email: debbie.furber@fbcpublishing.com

Contents canadian cattlemen · September 2017 · Volume 80, No. 8

 A N I M A L H EA LT H

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Cattlemen and Canadian Cattlemen are Trade Marks of Glacier FarmMedia LP. Cattlemen is published monthly by Glacier FarmMedia LP. Head office: Winnipeg, Manitoba. Printed by Transcontinental LGMC. Cattlemen is printed with linseed oil-based inks.

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FEATURES

 A N I M A L H EA LT H

Do you have a veterinaryclient-patient relationship. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 ‘Software disease’ ― the hazards of plastic, net wrap and twines . . . . . . . . . . 12 Malignant catarrhal fever ― learn about it; guard against it. . . . . . . . . . . 16 A proper dosage is crucial for efficacy. . . 18

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‘Software disease’

12

The hazards of plastic net wrap and twines

 Animal health

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Watch for urinary stones . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26 The search continues for TB and JD vaccines. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30 Pre-plan for emergency slaughter. . . . . . 32 Verified Beef Production . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37

DEPARTMENTS

Member

The editors and journalists who write, contribute and provide opinions to Canadian Cattlemen and Glacier FarmMedia LP attempt to provide accurate and useful opinions, information and analysis. However, the editors, journalists, Canadian Cattlemen and Glacier FarmMedia LP cannot and do not guarantee the accuracy of the information contained in this publication. Use or non-use of any information is at the reader’s sole risk, and we assume no responsibility for any actions or decisions taken by any reader of this publication based on any and all information provided.

On the trail of bTB. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22

The search continues 30 for TB and JD vaccines

Congratulations!

To our September survey winner, Joyce Scarf of Roblin, Man. This month’s survey is on page 48.

Cover Photo: Jeannette Greaves

Comment. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 Newsmakers. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 Our History. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 Nutrition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28 Free Market Reflections. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29 Research on the Record. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34 Straight from the Hip. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36 Vet Advice. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38 Prime Cuts. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39 CCA Reports. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40 News Roundup. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42 Purely Purebred. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50 The Markets. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53 Market Talk. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55 Sales and Events. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56

C at t l e m e n · S e p t e m b e r 2 0 1 7

3

 COMMENT

By Gren Winslow

Will sustainable beef pay?

F

inally. After years of discussion and planning and surveying and researching, the Canadian version of Verified Sustainable Beef is about to face its ultimate test in the marketplace.

It begins this October with the soft launch of the Canadian Beef Sustainability Acceleration pilot in which Cargill, the Beef InfoXchange System (BIXS) and Verified Beef Production Plus (VBP+) will open the first verified sustainable supply chain for beef.

VBP+ will train and audit operations and verify they meet all the benchmarks of a verified sustainable Canadian beef operation. All Canadian cow-calf, backgrounder and feedlot operations are eligible to participate.

BIXS will track the cattle through the chain right up to the plant.

Once in the plant Cargill’s in-house system will track the beef right to the participating customer. At the moment, McDonald’s Canada and the Swiss Chalet brand of Cara Foods are signed onto the program.

Participating producers will earn credits quarterly but the value of those credits will depend on the volume of cattle delivered as well as returns generated from the sustainable supply chain.

The pilot won’t be able to make any official claim to supply sustainable beef until the Canadian Roundtable for Sustainable Beef officially launches its verification framework. At its August meeting the CRSB board agreed to target early December during the Western Canada Conference on Soil Health and Grazing in Edmonton for this announcement.

Meanwhile Cargill has committed to record the beef from any producers who sign on the program before the launch date and add those credits to their first quarterly payment early in 2018.

The goal at this point is to get the ball rolling toward building a supply chain that could consistently deliver a large enough supply of sustainable beef that McDonald’s or Swiss Chalet could start to think about marketing a branded Canadian product.

A lot of the pieces are already in place.

The Canadian roundtable patterned its verification framework over the international standard for sustainable production laid down by the Global Roundtable for Sustainable Beef.

It begins with on-farm benchmarks to measure how well a operation sustains its natural resources, its people, its community, the health and welfare of its animals and the production of safe, quality beef while maintaining efficiency and innovation in its operation. There are 27 indicators used by auditors to verify an on-farm operation.

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Another list of indicators has been developed for beef processors. The feedback period for that list closed in late August, so barring any major disagreements it should be completed before December.

They’ve also had to develop a framework that auditors can use to score these indicators, and then put it all into a manual that the auditors can use.

Next they had to sign up a third party to verify the chain of custody as the beef moves along each link of the chain. In August the Canadian roundtable was in negotiations with NSF International to provide that service. As of last month Cargill was still looking for a company to verify its chain of custody on the pilot supply chain.

As a final step the roundtable had to come up with a way to establish equivalency with other certification companies or organizations. The audit protocols of the VBP+ program, for example, required some adjustment before it could deliver sustainable audits.

It’s important to realize that the roundtable only establishes the protocol for verifying sustainability. It will be up to the trade to make it work, which brings us back to the Cargill, VBP+, BIXS pilot. It will run for a minimum of one year. What happens after that will depend on how well it is received by producers and consumers.

To get in this game you need to get trained and audited by VBP+ and register with BIXS (at www. bixsco.com/). You will also have to give VBP+ and BIXS permission to include your data in anonymous, aggregated reports to the project team, and provide the necessary information to enable credit payments.

You’ll also have to pay for your audit.

It will be interesting to see how producers respond to this call for sustainability and, even more intriguing, how consumers react when they can buy beef produced in an environmentally, socially and economically sustainable fashion.

Once the verification framework is announced the Canadian roundtable can get on with the larger chore of assessing how well the Canadian beef industry is doing as a whole. A national assessment carried out in 2014 gave us the initial benchmarks for environmental, social and economic sustainability.

Since then there has been quite a bit of activity to move the needle up in all three areas before the next national assessment.

It wouldn’t hurt to have some money on the table for doing the right thing.

Canada is the first to put sustainable beef into the market, and you can bet the rest of the beef-producing world will be watching the results. c

www.canadiancattlemen.ca

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 THE INDUST RY

NewsMakers David and Vicki Francis and their son Bret of David Francis Farm of Lady Fane, P.E.I. are the 2017 winners of the Canadian Cattlemen’s Association Environmental StewardDavid Francis ship Award. The family has invested heavily in soil conservation on its potato and beef operation building grassed waterways, buffer zones, terraces and berms to reduce erosion. Their rotational grazing system Vicki Francis and annual applications of composted manure added organic matter to improve the water-holding capacity and nutrient levels in the soil. David and Brett are active participants in P.E.I.’s Environmental Farm Plan and Alternative Land Use Services program.

Dr. Karen Schwartzkopf-Genswein, a senior research scientist at Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada in Lethbridge, Alta., is the 2017 recipient of the Canadian Beef Dr. Schwartzkopf- Industry Award for OutGenswein standing Research and Innovation. She also holds adjunct appointments at several universities. Her research has made contributions to early disease detection in cattle, feeding behaviour, stress assessment, and acidosis, and been instrumental in advancing practices related to beef cattle transportation, lameness and pain mitigation. Her research results have guided the industry in updating Canadian transport regulations and the Canadian Beef Code of Practice. She also sits on several national and international committees that set standards for on-farm auditing of health and welfare practices in beef cattle.

Greg Penner

6

Greg Penner, an associate professor at the University of Saskatchewan, was one of three recipients of the 2017 American Society of Animal Science Early Career Achievement Award for his research

C a t t l e m e n · S E P TEM B E R 2 0 1 7

related to acidosis, volatile fatty acid absorption and functionality of the gastrointestinal tract in ruminant animals. In 2014 he was appointed Centennial Enhancement Chair in Ruminant Nutritional Physiology at the U of S. The ASAS Early Career Achievement Award recognizes the achievements of young scholars working toward the mission of ASAS. Marty Carpenter, the former director of the Canadian Beef Centre of Excellence, has been elected president of the board of directors of the Canadian Beef Grading Marty Carpenter Agency in Calgary. The vice-president is Robert Bielak of St. Helen’s Meat Packers Ltd. of Toronto. Carpenter replaces Willie Van Solkema, the former president of JBS Canada, and Bielak replaces Andre Roy, the new director general of Les Producteurs de bovines du Québec. The agency is expected to adopt the USDA’s five yield grade standard as soon as Ottawa passes the Safe Food for Canadians regulations which will authorize the agency to alter its grade standards without amending the regulations.

British Columbia beef producer Linda Allison will serve a second term as chair of the board of directors of Canadian Beef Cattle Research Market Development and Promotion Linda Allison Agency, the industry-run organization that oversees the Canadian Beef Check-off Agency and the marketing division, Canada Beef. Heinz Reimer of Manitoba remains on the executive committee as vice-chair, joined by committee chairs, Lonnie Lake of Sysco Canada in finance; Larry Weatherby of Nova Scotia on governance, Mike Kennedy from Cargill, on market development and promotion, and Alberta’s Doug Sawyer, the Canadian Beef Cattle Check-Off committee.

The Cattlemen’s Young Leaders program has announced its mentoring list for 2018. The 16 young producers will receive a $2,000 travel budget and the opportunity to be

mentored by industry experts in their chosen field of interest over the next several months. The finalists are: • British Columbia: Taylor Grafton, Alecia Karapita, Andrea Haywood-Farmer, Carley Henninger.

• Alberta: Ashely Gaudet, Matt Kumlin, Ben Wilson, Lee Creech, James Jenkins, Melissa Lee, Cale Toews, Lacey McCrae.

• Saskatchewan: Quin Anderson Folk, Kaitlyn Polegi, Allan Hjertaas.

• Manitoba: Rachel Verwey.

Ellen Crane, of Murray Siding, N.S., the general manager of the Maritime Beef Council, is one of four Nuffield Canada scholars named for 2018 (see our story pg. 43). The other Ellen Crane finalists are Josh Oulton of Taproot Farms, Port Williams, N.S., studying the growing of high-quality flax fibre for long-line linen processing; Gavin Robertson with the Niagara College Teaching Winery studying the content of international viticulture training programs; and Shelley Spruitt of Against the Grain Farms near Mountain, Ont., who is focussed on the restoration of ancient grains to produce value-added products and whole grains and flour.

Carrie Cholack is joining the Elanco Animal Health beef sales team for southern Alberta. She spent 14 years with Farm Credit Canada as credit manager and senior relationship Carrie Cholack manager primarily dealing with alliances for livestock financing.

Erin Kishkan of Pinnacle View Limousin in Quesnel, B.C. is the new president of the Canadian Limousin Association. Joining her on the board are vicepresident Eric Boon from Erin Kishkan Sask­atchewan and treasurer Bill Zwambag from Ontario along with directors Dan Darling, Matthew Heleniak and Mike Geddes from Ontario, Cody Miller and Tim Andrew from Alberta and Joe Cooper from N.S. c

www.canadiancattlemen.ca

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 our histo ry

Cattle Empire

By Lewis Nordyke A book review by Sheilagh S. Jameson Canadian Cattlemen, September 1950

C

attle Empire, the fabulous story of the 3-million acre XIT ranch of Texas, provides proof of that old maxim that “truth is stranger than fiction.”

It records the history of the biggest ranch in the United States of America, of the building of the largest State Capitol at the time and, surely, of the greatest “sight unseen” land deal ever made. And it is all true.

As the writer aptly expressed it, he went “into two tons of yellow paper and came out with a book weighing about a pound.” The two tons of yellow paper are comprised of more than sixty thousand letters and documents pertaining to the XIT and now at the Panhandle Plains Historical Museum of West Texas State College at Canyon.

Mr. Nordyke has shown himself to be a master at the task of piecing together the story, of sifting the chaff and retaining the kernels.

The history of the XIT Ranch really began in 1875 when the State of Texas decided to have a magnificent capital. Money was rather scarce in Texas at that time and land was plentiful, so it was decided to exchange some of the vast Panhandle territory, then deemed worthless, for the new Capital.

It was not until 1882 that the trade was finally consummated. Four Chicago politicians and business men became owners of the Capitol Reservation, as it was called, a track of land nearly 200 miles long, averaging 27 miles wide, lying on the eastern part of Texas. In return, they were going to build the Capitol, as big and as beautiful as the specifications required. It would cost, they figured, one and a half million dollars. Actually, it cost them 3 and one quarter million but that was in the future.

“What a strange assortment of men to be considering a slice of the Texas Panhandle,” the author exclaims. And as he pictures them, the reader wholeheartedly agrees.

Three were the Farwell Brothers, who financed the enterprise. Charles B. was a politician, at that time a member of Congress, and later a Senator. John V. was Chicago’s biggest wholesale dry goods merchant and a religious zealot. He promoted the revivalist, Dwight I. Moody, and later, the noted Billy Sunday.

Abner Taylor, a well-known contractor, was also very interested in politics and eventually was elected to Congress. The responsibility of building the Capitol was in his hands.

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The fourth owner was Amos Babcock, who was not as successful as the others, and who later dropped out of the company. He, however, was the first to see the broad acres of the XIT. The writer says that these four men had a common denominator — they each felt the call and promise of the West and not one of them knew a thing about a cow.

The chapters in which Mr. Nordyke tells of Amos Babcock’s excursion into Texas and his trip down the 200-mile length of the newly-acquired territory are interesting and amusing. Babcock arrived in Tascasa, the only town within 100 miles of XIT territory, in a mule-drawn U.S. army ambulance, complete with chairs, stove and like impediments. He was followed by another wagon loaded with as great a variety of supplies as ever was seen on the Panhandle. Altogether, it was a layout that created quite a sensation in Tascasa.

The allure of the rolling rangeland of Texas moved Yankee Babcock, even as it later moved each of the other XIT overlords, when he saw it. In view of Babcock’s glowing reports it was decided to go ranching on a mammoth scale.

In fact, the plans became too mammoth for the Chicago associates. John V. Farwell hurried off to England, where he managed to set up a syndicate called the Capitol Freehold Land and Investment Co. Ltd. This syndicate was to raise the money necessary for building the Capitol and operating the ranch. In return, profits were expected to pour in from the cattle business. For security, the syndicate was to hold a mortgage on the land and livestock.

One continuous headache was the attitude of suspicion with which the XIT cowboys, who at one time numbered more than 150, and Texans in general, viewed the company. It wasn’t local. In fact, it was practically foreign, with its offices in Chicago, and even in London. Also, neighboring outfits and settlers resented their big neighbor’s high-handed ways so as the author expressed it, “The XIT was the Goliath of the Cow Country and the little Davids were swarming with their sling-shots.”

There was the recurring menace of cattle rustlers. Worse still, it became more than a question of straightforward rustling, for clouds of suspicion and webs of intrigue

evolved around the ranch managers, absentee owners and rustlers, both mythical and in the flesh.

Another great worry was the water shortage. Taylor and the other “boses” in their northern cities were inclined to discount the urgency of this pressing need but to Barbecue Campbell, the first ranch manager, upon whom the responsibility for watering many thousand head of cattle rested, it was very real.

Barbecue Campbell, so called from his brand Bar BQ, found it rather confusing to have several bosses all sending different instructions. This remote control also resulted in the reams and reams of letters.

Then wolves descended on the ranch. The old Texas longhorns had been little bothered by wolves, but the crafty killers soon found that the squat Herefords and Aberdeen Angus cattle were easy meat. So the cowboys waged war on wolves and “Wolfer” became a new word in Cow Country.

At times blizzards swept across the prairies leaving cattle carcasses in their wake. Still more often and more disastrously came fires.

These left carcasses and nothing else. The winter’s pasture would go in a few hours.

One fire, refered as the Big Burn, was the worst disaster that ever hit the XIT. These are just some of the troubles that this big ranch weathered. And so the story goes.

Through it certain pictures stand out with clarity: the birth of the XIT brand; the last great Texas round-up, before the “bob” wire of the XIT wrought its change in range land customs; the Big Burn; the stampede of thirsty cattle; John V. Farwell preaching a sermon to cowboys at Buffalo Springs; a stream of rain pouring through the roof of the grand Capitol during the dedication, and many others.

Cattle Empire is well named. Before the XIT was through, its dominion extended beyond the 200-mile Texas holdings, over the twelvehundred mile Montana Trail and across two million acres of leased Montana land between the Yellowstone and Missouri Rivers.

Published by William Morrow and Co. in New York and simultaneously in Canada by William Collins, Sons and Co., Canada. c For more of the past from the pages of our magazine see the History Section at www.canadiancattlemen.ca.

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 animal h ea lt h

By Debbie Furber

Do you have a VeterinaryClient-Patient Relationship?

T

he significance of veterinary-client-patient relationships (VCPR) is being elevated to a new level as Canadian veterinarians strive to fulfill their obligations for oversight of medically important antimicrobials in the global battle to check the spread of resistant bacteria.

By the end of this year, veterinarians must have records on file to validate VCPRs before prescribing antibiotics. Purchasing supplies from a vet clinic or taking the odd cow or calf in for treatment doesn’t necessarily constitute a valid VCPR. According to the Canadian Veterinary Medical Association (CVMA) a legitimate VCPR must be backed up by evidence of relevant and timely interactions with clients and their animals such as farm visits, clinic appointments, consultations, individual animal or herd examinations, lab reports or production record reviews, sufficient to show the veterinarian has taken the steps necessary to establish medical need to prescribe and dispense pharmaceuticals.

He or she should also be available for followup consultations, especially in cases involving adverse reactions or apparent treatment failures.

Veterinary medicine is a provincially/territorially regulated profession, so the exact definition of VCPRs varies from one jurisdiction to another.

In the interest of helping Canada meet its obligations to preserve the efficacy of antimicrobials in veterinary and human medicine, the CVMA has spent the past two years developing a common framework that provincial/territorial veterinary associations can use to develop their own standards in this area.

Of course, it also has had to coincide with the federal government’s Antimicrobial Resistance and Use in Canada: A Federal Framework for Action, released in October 2014, and the Public Health Agency of Canada’s action plan in March 2015.

Veterinary oversight of medically important antimicrobials given to animals in feed or water has been a requirement since December 2016.

Similarly, any new medically important antimicrobial approved by Health Canada

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C a t t l e m e n · S E P TEM B E R 2 0 1 7

for use in animals has only been available with a veterinary prescription since 2004.

As of the end of this year, the requirement for a vet script is being extended to over-thecounter antimicrobials as well. This mirrors changes in the U.S. and the CVMA considers it to be an important additional responsibility for veterinarians to demonstrate improved antimicrobial stewardship.

Stewardship in practice starts with deciding whether prescribing an antibiotic is the best course of treatment and if so, selecting the most appropriate drug, dose, duration and route of administration to optimize treatment while minimizing the risk of resistance. It’s also incumbent upon veterinarians to consider alternatives, such as vaccination, management or facility changes as well as other types of products.

Dr. Troy Bourque, the CVMA’s immediate past president and a practicing veterinarian in Alberta, says provincial veterinary associations are at various stages as far as implementing oversight of over-the-counter drugs as are the governments in terms of legislating the change.

Alberta veterinarians, for example, have been overseeing non-prescription antibiotics for the past 10 years, when the CVMA developed its prudent-use guidelines for beef cattle, dairy cattle, poultry and swine.

Any antibiotic sold from a veterinary establishment in Alberta already requires a prescription and valid VCPR in order for a veterinarian to prescribe any antibiotic.

Dr. Steve Hendrick with the Coaldale Veterinary Clinic at Lethbridge explains that pro-

vincial veterinary associations are responsible for ensuring their members meet professional standards, including those for VCPRs and oversight of antimicrobial use.

Whether or not a veterinarian is willing to establish a VCPR with you depends on his or her knowledge of the species and license category.

Since the Coaldale clinic is licenced by the Alberta Veterinary Medical Association as a food-animal practice and the clinic’s veterinarians chose to focus exclusively on cattle, they would not be able to form a VCPR with you to care for horses or dogs, for example.

A provincial association may specify exemptions to the VCPR requirement.

The College of Veterinarians of Ontario, for instance, allows veterinarians to treat animals in emergency situations without having a VCPR with the owner.

Hendrick says VCPRs with feedlot clients are well defined by virtue of their regular visits and formal reports. Although written health protocols don’t constitute a VCPR in and of themselves, they are part of the record and use of certain drugs for treating common diseases may be a step in a protocol.

VCPRs with cow-calf clients are formed by making notes after every contact with producers whether by phone, at the clinic or during farm visits, most commonly for preg checking and semen testing nowadays, Hendrick explains. Those visits give him an opportunity to discuss herd health issues, vaccination programs and management practices, as well as to acknowledge common

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animal health

diseases and strategies for handling them as situations arise between times.

Veterinarians are also responsible for working with clients to tailor disease prevention plans for their operations. A plan could include giving medication as a supplement in the feed or water as a preventative measure to ward off disease. He provides the required veterinary oversight by working with the client’s nutritionist to review the concentration of any antimicrobial called for in the ration before issuing a corresponding prescription.

“VCPRs and veterinary oversight are about safeguarding antibiotics. If a veterinarian has never been to your farm or seen the animal you won’t be able to just walk in and get a prescription,” he adds.

The hot-button topic at the moment is whether having oversight of antimicrobial use with the legal authority to write prescriptions and dispense pharmaceuticals will make veterinarians the exclusive sellers of antibiotics.

This could become a barrier to access for those who rely on feed mills for supplements or local retail outlets that have historically had the authority to sell the older over-the-counter antibiotics and pre-mixed medicated supplements, such as milk replacer and chick starter.

One of the framework’s suggested standards is that a registered veterinarian, having determined the need and written a prescription, must give a copy to the client if the client wants to purchase the medication from a legitimate source other than the prescribing veterinarian. However, the prescribing veterinarian is responsible to meet all oversight requirements, regardless of where the client gets the prescription filled.

According to the framework, dispensing a prescription is a unique activity with a full set of responsibilities under provincial/territorial authority and may only be performed by a registered veterinarian or a registered pharmacist in accordance with provincial/territorial legislation.

This could mean that retail outlets would need to establish a pharmacy with a qualified veterinarian or pharmacist on staff to fill prescriptions for antibiotics in any form. Pharmacies in the true sense of the word fall under Health Canada’s jurisdiction with another set of rules.

Bourque acknowledges that the oversight of dispensing antimicrobials is a concern for veterinarians across the country, and says provincial/territorial governments, not veterinary associations or the

federal government, need to look at who can fill prescriptions for antibiotics and how oversight of dispensing is done.

“This is where there is uncertainty. Dispensing is an activity that must have oversight because of the risk to public health when antibiotics are used in food animals. Dispensing from a veterinary clinic has oversight by the province’s veterinary association act and regulations. The profession does not care who sells the antibi-

otics. We care a great deal about who fills prescriptions,” he explains.

Hendrick’s hope is for a balance between safeguarding antimicrobials to minimize antimicrobial resistance and misuse of drugs, but at the same time, not making it so onerous that the welfare of animals is compromised because they don’t get appropriate and timely treatment.

The framework is available on the CVMA’s website. c

“When my pen riders pull cattle, I want them to have a fast acting treatment that’s cost-effective.”

It just makes sense to treat cattle for BRD with the new generation macrolide, that is fast acting,1 long lasting2 and has a price that won’t break the bank. (And it’s plastic, so you won’t break the bottle either.)

Treat them with ZACTRAN ®.

Ask your veterinarian why ZACTRAN is ideal for cattle in your feedlot.

1. Giguère S, Huang R, Malinski TJ, Dorr PM, Tessman RK & Somerville BA. Disposition of gamithromycin in plasma, pulmonary epithelial lining fl uid, bronchoalveolar cells, and lung tissue in cattle. Am. J. Vet. Res. 72(3): 326-330 (2011).

2. Based on label claims.

ZACTRAN ® is a registered trademark of Merial (a member of the Boehringer Ingelheim group of companies), used under license. ©2017 Merial Canada Inc. (a member of the Boehringer Ingelheim group of companies). All Rights Reserved.

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C a t t l e m e n · S E P TEM B E R 2 0 1 7 MER17 7003 Zactran_Therap_CC 4.58_7.5_EN.indd 1

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8/11/17 2:00 PM

 Anima l h ea lt h

By Heather Smith Thomas

‘Software Disease’ — The Hazards of Plastic, Net Wrap and Twines

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attle, especially young ones, are curious and chew on anything within reach. They may eat baling twines, plastic bags and other debris that ends up in their pen or pasture. The strange material may taste or smell interesting, so the animals chomp it down.

Sometimes they accidentally ingest foreign objects in their feed. Cattle eat hurriedly and don’t bother to chew their feed very much the first time around. Every year a few cattle die mysteriously — often after a slow decline with loss of weight and diarrhea — and the owner and veterinarian may be clueless about the cause of death unless the animal is opened up to find the material plugging the GI tract.

For example, Colorado Springs veterinarian Dr. Gary McIntyre was called out to a ranch to check a steer that was slowly wasting away with watery diarrhea and getting weaker each day. The steer was a little bloated and wasn’t eating much, but drank a lot of water. His temperature was normal, heart and lungs seemed fine. He didn’t have hardware, and none of the fecal or blood tests that were taken showed any indication of disease. The steer finally died and Dr. McIntyre did a necropsy — and discovered denim pants plugging up the stomach.

Ingestion of various materials (usually plastic) has become a common killer today because cattle have access to more litter. The pasture or pen may be next to a highway where litter from passing cars blows over the countryside. If cattle are within a mile of dumpsters, construction sites, or a housing subdivision’s garbage that may blow over the fields, they may encounter various objects to chew on. Plastic bags, party balloons, weather balloons and other “fallout” from human activity may end up inside cattle, and there’s no way to remove the blockage without surgery. Without knowing the problem, very few veterinarians perform exploratory surgery.

The result is a quiet, slow, painful death, with no definitive symptoms.

Small pieces of material may go on through and you never know the animal ate it. If it’s a large blockage, however, the animal may stop passing manure, and stop eating. The GI tract

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is “full” so there’s no room for more feed. A partial blockage leads to diarrhea, since only the liquid contents of the gut can make it through. This leads to suspicion of diseases like coccidiosis, salmonella, BVD, E. coli, Johne’s disease, liver flukes or other parasites, but there is no treatment for “plastic disease.”

The best prevention is to pick up every piece of garbage you find in your pastures, including old hay twines, and never re-bale broken bales without first removing the twines.

Despite its size, wads of net wrap such as this one can be easy to miss in a full rumen if you are not looking for it. Photo: John Campbell

NET WRAP AND TWINES

A growing number of cattle producers are discovering the risks for cattle when leaving net wrap or twine on big bales of hay/straw when feeding, or using a bale processor to chop forage as it is being fed. Dustin McCullen, a rancher near Dixon, Montana, noticed a cow losing weight, with diarrhea. She got to the point that he shot her as the most humane thing to do, then had his veteri-

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narian, Dr. Beth Blevins, do a post-mortem examination.

“A few years ago we started noticing an occasional cow start wasting away, with little or no appetite. They went downhill fast once they started losing weight. We’d lose about one cow per year. We first noticed it about eight years ago, after we bought a new baler that used net wrap on the big round bales,” says McCullen.

“The cows lost weight quickly and we’d end up shooting them because we didn’t want them starving to death or getting too weak to stand up. We couldn’t figure it out. Then we heard about one of our neighbours having troubles and finding the rumen full of net wrap. I’d been suspecting something like this, so the next case we saw, we asked our vet to do a post-mortem. Sure enough, the rumen had a big wad of net wrap in it.”

With some of the first cases, he thought it might be hardware. “We’d put magnets in these cows and give them antibiotics, but nothing helped. These cows were starving to death in spite of lots of feed available. The rumen was full — with the net wrap and impaired digestion — so they couldn’t eat very much,” says McCullen.

“We wondered about Johne’s disease but we hadn’t bought any outside cattle. After we found the net wrap in the cow our vet cut open, we suspect that’s what was killing the other cows.” The wad of net wrap removed from the rumen was huge, and tangled amongst the hay in one big mess.

“In the past we often put straw bales in a round bale feeder, and to keep it from shattering and being wasted we’d leave the net wrap on and come back the next day and take it out of the empty feeder. I think sometimes the cows would get hold of that net wrap and eat it,” he says.

“When our vet posted that cow, this was the first case she’d seen, but she thought most people don’t check. They might have a cow or two that wasted away and they never know what the problem was. In our experience there has been no reason for the weight loss; it might be a four-year-old cow, or a 14-year-old cow.

The symptoms are similar to Johne’s (but Continued on page 13

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Anim a l Hea lt h

Continued from page 12

young cows don’t show symptoms, if they have Johne’s) and hardware, but after dragging that big wad of net wrap out of this cow we are certain that’s what happened to the other cows,” he says. They all declined in flesh and eventually had to be euthanized.

“When bales are frozen and we roll them out for the cows, it can be nearly impossible to take the net wrap off. We just leave it on the outside round and come back and get it later after the cows have eaten the hay. That’s probably when we have the most trouble — when the net wrap or twine is stuck to those bales and you have to leave it on there,” says McCullen.

“We didn’t seem to have that much trou­ ble with twine. Perhaps it’s possible for a piece of twine to go all the way through the cow, whereas the big wad of net wrap can’t make it through.” It might depend on how much twine the cow ate, and whether it breaks apart going through the stomachs.

Beth Blevins, the veterinarian who did the necropsy on McCullen’s cow, says cattle may keep ingesting more pieces of net wrap and it gets all tangled together as a bigger wad, making it even harder for it to pass on through. Diagnosis is difficult in the living cow because the wad of net wrap would not be detectable with ultrasound. “It would look just like part of the rumen contents, mixed in with all the hay and feed,” she says.

The plastic doesn’t seem to break down in the rumen. “I don’t know how long this wad was in her gut, but it looked just like fresh net wrap — except that it had changed to a darker color. It didn’t break down at all.

The rumen has bacteria for fermentation digestion, but it doesn’t have the acid that’s in the abomasum (true stomach). The acid might break it down, but the net wrap stayed in the rumen,” says Blevins.

John Campbell, head of the department of large animal clinical sciences, Western College of Veterinary Medicine in Sask­ atchewan, has seen producers lose cows that ingested net wrap left on the bales or chopped up by a processor.

“I’m starting to believe this is a bigger problem than we thought. A few years ago I did a herd investigation in which a fairly well managed cow-calf herd had six cows die in two days. The local veterinarian asked me to come by, and I was able to necropsy two cows that had recently died. The cows were close to calving and in reasonable body condition,” Campbell says.

“The rumens were very large and full of feed and I found large amounts of plastic net www.canadiancattlemen.ca

 r es ea rch

NDSU studies Beef specialist Carl Dahlen, North Dakota State University Animal Science Department, became interested in this problem after the NDSU diagnostic lab necropsied a case of acute bloat associated with ingestion from a large wad of net wrap. He decided to compare various materials to see how well they break down (or not) in the rumen or move on through.

“We need to do studies looking at long-term implications of ingesting this material.

Our study was a short-term look at what happens to it in the rumen,” he says.

Six types of material were evaluated: sisal twine, biodegradable twine, three different kinds of net wrap, and hay (bromegrass). The hay was a control sample, for comparison. Each material was cut into small pieces, and a two-gram sample put into nylon bags and placed in the rumen of two forage-fed Holstein steers.

“The nylon bags would not degrade in the rumen, yet the rumen fluid could come into the bag and bacteria action could occur in the bags. We kept some of these samples inside the cattle for 14 days,” says Dahlen.

After being in the rumen for various amounts of time (four, seven and 14 days) the bags were taken out and rinsed, drained and dried, then weighed.

“Nothing was disappearing. After 14 days in the rumen, none of the three types of net wrap or the biodegradable twine samples disappeared. Most of the hay sample was digested and gone, and more than 70 per cent of the sisal twine disappeared over the 14-day period. Biodegradable twine breaks down in UV light, but there is no UV light in the rumen, so it doesn’t break down in there,” he says.

“We did another study, feeding steers net wrap. One group was fed net wrap until harvest and another was fed net wrap up until 14 days before harvest. That group would have 14 days to continue eating and not have any new net wrap coming into their rumen. We wanted to see if the net wrap might go on through and if the rumen could clear itself of this material, or if this material would still be there after 14 days,” says Dahlen.

“This study looked at what might happen in the rumen if the net wrap is floating free in there while the animal burps, chews its cud, etc. It could come up with the other material, get chewed more — and the rumen is churning/pulling everything around inside it during the digestive process. We wondered if this might clear net wrap out of the system,” he explains.

“We opened those cattle up and there was still net wrap all through the rumen, even in the steers that hadn’t been fed any more net wrap for 14 days. That shows it is staying in there and may just keep accumulating.”

That wasn’t all they found. The rumens also held rocks and little pieces of plastic from the covering of a silage pile.

“These objects can either block on the front end, which would lead to bloat (hindering ability to burp) or block the other end, and the material can’t leave the rumen as readily.” This would create lingering effects like impaction, or weight loss because the rumen is full.

wrap occluding the outflow. The producer had used a bale processor but did not remove net wrap when processing bales. I believe the cows ingested large pieces of net wrap and it may not have been an issue until they were heavily pregnant. Once the fetus got large enough to restrict abdominal space, the rumen became occluded and huge, and these cows died of what appeared to be suffocation.”

“The herd I investigated had multiple cows that died within a few days of each other, possibly because they were heavily pregnant. The full rumen and large uterus may have put too much pressure on the

lungs. In other instances net wrap may become entangled with all the food mate­ rial and create blockage at the exit into the intestine. This creates a slower demise, with the cow losing weight for a period of time.”

The ingested material may be small amounts of chopped up net wrap, or a large piece left on a bale — or not chopped up by the processor. “Perhaps the blades are dull, or the net wrap gets wound around them, or sometimes the processor just shoots that wrap out in one big piece and doesn’t chop Continued on page 14

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A n i ma l H ealt h

Continued from page 13

it up. In this particular instance it was obvious that the processor was not chopping up the wrap,” says Campbell.

“I think sometimes the ingested pieces don’t affect cattle as much when they are not pregnant. There is enough room in the rumen for a fair amount of foreign matter to roll around without obstruct-

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ing anything. But once a cow gets heavily pregnant with a big fetus pushing against the rumen, this makes it more difficult for the material to move around in there. It may get wedged in the wrong spot. It might suddenly obstruct the outflow and in some cases it might completely block the outlet and food can’t go on through the tract.” These cows can’t eat much and waste away.

“The pregnant cows I observed were in good shape, however, and dying suddenly. Their rumens were full of feed, and they had a big calf in them, and when they lay down with pressure on their lungs, they essentially suffocated. One of the cows I opened up had just started to calve. The calf’s legs were entering the birth canal.

She may have laid down to calve and couldn’t breathe adequately because of the full rumen,” says Campbell.

“The rumens of the cows I opened up were gigantic. It took a lot of time to wade through all the feed material in the rumen to find the net wrap. It would be easy to miss if you weren’t looking for it, even though these were really big wads,” he says.

“I don’t know how common this problem is, or how often we’re missing it. For that producer who lost the six cows, you wouldn’t know whether he’d have 10 more cows die, or no more cows die.

Certainly you could look for and diagnosis this condition in the heavily pregnant cow if you saw a cow that was really full on the left side and palpated her rumen and it was hard and impacted, rather than full of gas,” says Campbell.

“You could do a rumenotomy — open up the rumen and search for the foreign material. It wouldn’t be an easy job, with all the food material, but it would be something a person could try.” It might be a chance to save the cow.

“It would be an extensive surgery because you’d be pulling material out of that rumen for quite a while before you could get it all out. A lot of that stuff was hard and dry, and packed tightly, in the cows I opened up. It would take some time,” he says.

In this particular instance the bale processor had not chopped the net wrap up into little pieces like you’d expect it to. “It seemed to wrap around and then shoot it out in a big wad now and then,” he says. You often see big pieces lying out in the field after the cows have eaten the hay. It might be wise to gather it up or take it off the bales before feeding them, but that can be a challenge — if moisture has frozen the net wrap to the bales.

It can be almost impossible to get it all off. c

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 animal h ea lt h

By Debbie Furber

Malignant Catarrhal Fever — learn about it; guard against it “

I

t took her piece by piece. Without a doubt it is the most devastating (cattle) disease we have ever dealt with,” says a member of a farm family who finally had to euthanize a valuable young purebred cow after two months of intensive therapy and investigation.

Laboratory tests confirmed malignant catarrhal fever (MCF). The only way known for cattle to get this disease is by ingesting or inhaling ovine (sheep) herpesvirus-2 (OvHV-2) shed in nasal, oral and possibly eye secretions of sheep, or the alcelaphine herpesvirus-1 shed by wildebeest found only in zoos and wildlife parks in North America.

This cow was never near wildebeest and the only time it would have been anywhere close to sheep was at livestock events.

With show season and 4-H events just around the corner, the family urges beef producers to take time to learn about MCF and discuss biosecurity measures with show organizers and at the club level.

“Sure, we know there are health risks whenever we take cattle to shows, but we have vaccinations to protect against those. There is no vaccination for MCF and no cure. That’s why biosecurity is so important — so we can happily exist with sheep and beef. For us, no ribbon, prize or amount of camaraderie is worth the risk if biosecurity isn’t in place.”

The first signs in their cow were puffy eyes and an extremely high fever of around 44 C (38.5 C is normal). As days went by, the eyes gradually turned opaque blue, ulcers developed in the mouth and nose, and swelling in the joints became noticeable. When the virus attacked the nervous system causing erratic eye twitching and loss of balance, they knew it was time to say goodbye.

These are classical signs of MCF. The word “catarrhal” refers to inflammation of mucous membranes. Watery to thickened discharge from the upper respiratory tract, salivation, laboured breathing, ulcerations on the skin and loosening or sloughing of hooves are other signs. Swollen lymph nodes throughout the body are more common in cattle than bison, while diarrhea and bloody urine are more common in bison than cattle.

The disease is usually fatal once signs begin to appear and they become more pronounced and widespread throughout the body the

16

longer the animal survives. Many animals might look depressed for a day or two and then just die without showing any signs.

Cattle appear to have much higher levels of natural resistance to the OvHV-2 virus than bison, which experiments have shown to be 1,000 times more susceptible than cattle, according to Washington State University’s (WSU) MCF website that summarizes findings from global research and disease investigations.

Studies to date indicate many healthy cattle and bison have antibodies for OvHV-2, suggesting that they were exposed and fought off an active infection. Research is looking into the possibility of latent infections becoming active later in life.

One thing research is clear on is that the herpesvirus forms that cause MCF in susceptible animals do not make people sick.

In addition to the MCF viruses carried by sheep and wildebeest, new laboratory tests have identified four other herpesvirus types in other host species that might cause MCF in other susceptible species, one being farmed deer.

An MCF virus usually doesn’t cause disease in its host species, and susceptible species are considered dead-end hosts because they don’t shed the virus.

There is no indication that MCF spreads from bovine to bovine or to other species.

The same is true for bison.

Direct face-to-face contact with sheep or with their nasal/respiratory secretions left in water sources, feed bunks, stock trailers and on other equipment are known routes of transmission.

Cool, moist conditions favour survival of the virus and increase the risk of transmission, although it’s unlikely that it would survive more than 48 hours outside the host.

Finally, MCF is not a new disease. Wildebeest-associated MCF was described in Africa some 200 years ago and research began in the early 1900s. Sheep have long been established as a universal reservoir host of the OvHV-2 virus. The first confirmed case of OvHV-2 causing MCF in farmed bison in North America was in the U.S. in 1973.

For as old as this disease is, there are still many unanswered questions. Why is it that cattle and sheep have for many years co-existed on ranches without incidence? Why are there MCF cases when carriers aren’t anywhere

C a t t l e m e n · S E P TEM B E R 2 0 1 7

near? Airborne transmission over distances of up to five kilometres has been suspected based on observations such as animal density, separation distance and environmental conditions related to outbreaks in bison herds, but could vectors, such as insects, birds or rodents have a role in spreading the virus?

A WSU fact sheet suggests discoveries have been hampered by the difficulty developing a reliable laboratory test for the virus, and the sporadic, unpredictable nature of the disease. The low number of losses in cattle due to this disease also make it a low priority for research funding.

As the bison industry expanded, so too did the economic impact and the MCF research program established at WSU in collaboration with U.S.Agricultural Research Services (ARS) and other institutions in the 1990s.

Overall, research summaries suggest MCF is seriously under-reported either because it is mistaken for another disease, or not investigated because of the cost involved.

The incubation period can be long in a natural setting, maybe 200 days or more. One investigation of an outbreak that ended with 19 deaths among the 132 cattle housed in the same barn as sheep at a state fair in the U.S. reports that the number of days between exposure and clinical signs ranged from 46 to 139 days, averaging 76. Clinical signs appeared on average six days before death but ranged from one to 26 days. The report published in 2010 suggested that fair boards and veterinarians should re-examine biosecurity recommendations for livestock exhibitions.

Biosecurity

According to Alberta and Saskatchewan fact sheets most sheep in North America are assumed to be carriers of MCF, although a Saskatchewan MCF Task Force report in 2011 acknowledged the prevalence in Canadian sheep is basically unknown.

Young lambs at around two months of age start to pick up the OvHV-2 virus from older animals in the flock that are shedding. Shedding appears to be intermittent among individual animals and increases when they are under stress. It has been established that the highest risk time is when lambs are weaned around six to nine months of age and grouping them together concentrates the source.

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animal health

Processing, transportation, poor nutrition or health in general, and inclement weather are other stressful times believed to be potential risk factors for shedding as well as for susceptible species to develop MCF. Keeping those risk factors in mind, Dr. Wendy Wilkins, disease surveillance veterinarian with Saskatchewan Agriculture and a member of the Saskatchewan MCF Task Force, says the risk of transmission at shows is low but always present.

The basic biosecurity rule of thumb is to avoid contact between cattle and weaned lambs (up to 11 months of age). The state fair outbreak illustrates the need to house cattle and sheep in separate facilities, and water buckets, feed bunks and other equipment should never be shared.

In most cases, cattle and sheep can be raised together without problems provided a few basic guidelines are followed. Again, keep lambs away from cattle, don’t mix sheep and cattle during times of stress, don’t house sheep and cattle together indoors, don’t pen sheep and cattle together in crowded conditions, and don’t allow access to the same water bowls and feed bunks.

These guidelines should be applied at sales venues as well.

Wilkins adds that producer awareness of MCF is key to implementing appropriate biosecurity measures and knowing when to get your veterinarian involved, not only to confirm MCF, but to rule out foreign animal diseases with similar symptoms.

MCF is not a reportable disease in Canada,

however, Alberta and Saskatchewan have made it a notifiable disease for monitoring and information purposes only.

Prairie Diagnostic Services at Saskatoon, the B.C. Animal Health Centre veterinary lab at Abbotsford, and Veterinary Diagnostics Services at Winnipeg, offer testing services, including the PCR test to detect viral DNA. For more information, contact your local or provincial veterinarian. Saskatchewan and Alberta agriculture websites have brief fact sheets on MCF in cattle and/or bison.

The WSU Veterinary microbiology and pathology website is vmp.vetmed.wsu.edu/ research/malignant-catarrhal-fever/overview, or just search for the homepage and select research from the drop-down menu icon in the red banner at the top. c

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 animal h ea lt h

By Heather Smith Thomas

A Proper Dosage is Crucial for Efficacy

W

hen treating cattle with antibiotics, dewormers and other medications, it is important to use the proper dosage — which is generally determined by the weight of the animal. Thus it is crucial to know, not guess the weight. Under-dosing may not give the desired results, and overdosing in some instances can be harmful.

In the case of dewormers, under-dosing won’t kill the parasites and may simply lead to drug resistance.

Dr. Steve Hendrick, Coaldale Veterinary Clinic, a feedlot, dairy and cow-calf practice in Coaldale, Alta., says vaccines are not an issue.

These are usually dosed at two or five millilitres per head, depending on the product; the purpose is to provide antigen to stimulate an immune response; it’s not weight-specific.

Dr. Nathan Erickson, assistant professor, large animal clinical sciences, at the Western College of Veterinary Medicine in Saskatoon, says some producers ask if they should give the same vaccine dose to a calf versus a mature cow, and the answer is yes. “With vaccine, it’s not about size of the dose; it’s the amount of antigen that is in that dose. Whether the animal is large or small it needs the same amount of antigen to stimulate immune response,” he explains.

Antibiotics and dewormers are a different story, regarding size of the animal, but for any injection (including vaccine), each animal needs to be given the dose specified on the label, administered at the proper site on the animal, and by proper route, listed on the label (subcutaneous, intramuscular or intranasal).

“If there is an option on the label (subQ or IM) for the injection, go with the SubQ route and dosage, if possible, because there is a smaller chance of creating fibrosis or scarring. If the label includes both routes as options, SubQ administration is always preferred over IM injections,” says Erickson.

When giving any injection, make sure the entire dose is deposited where it should go (deep into the muscle, or under the skin) and that none of it leaks back out — or the animal may not receive an effective dose.

“It helps if you use the proper size (length and diameter) needle for the animal,” he says.

This will depend on the size of the animal, how thick the skin is, and the injection method.

When giving antibiotics there are several

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C a t t l e m e n · S E P TEM B E R 2 0 1 7

important considerations. “One reason it is important to always administer according to label directions, with proper dosage, is for withdrawal times. The withdrawal times established for that antibiotic are based on giving the correct dose, for the correct duration and by the correct method,” Erickson says. If you overdose or give a certain antibiotic more days than recommended, or by incorrect route, it may take longer for residues to be eliminated from the animal’s body.

“There are several reasons to not overdose or under-dose,” says Hendrick. “If you overdose, it’s costly. Under-dosing — not giving enough antibiotic or dewormer or delousing product — runs the risk of not being effective, and a chance for some of the more resistant parasites or pathogens to survive. There is a big push today to try to avoid development of resistant microbes or parasites. One of the main ways to perpetuate this problem is continuously under-dosing,” he says.

That doesn’t mean we should err on the side of overdose. We have to be smart about it because there are also disadvantages when overdosing. Besides the expense there may be adverse side effects for the animal if you give too much of a certain drug. Overuse of antibiotics in some situations may kill off the good bugs in the digestive tract, for instance, and lead to other problems.

To be most effective, dosage should be appropriate for the size and age of the animal.

“This means knowing the weight of the animal you are treating,” says Henrick. “I’ve had the opportunity to work in research herds and ranchers’ herds, running cattle through

the chute, and we often wager bets on what a certain animal weighs before it’s on the scale.

Producers might think they have cows that weigh about 1,200 pounds, when in reality they have some that weigh 1,600 to 1,800 pounds.

The average might be about 1,200 or maybe 1,400 pounds, but some individuals weigh a lot more. When trying to estimate weight, people can easily be off by 200 pounds or more.”

There have been studies looking at this. One study in South Africa had health professionals and producers estimating cattle weights and in general the producers tended to under­ estimate the weight of their animals. By using weight tapes or, even better, using a scale, you can improve accuracy of weight-based dosage and also become better at estimating weights.

“I know from experience looking at feedlot animals or going out to a ranch to treat calves, once you get them restrained or on the ground it’s tough sometimes to estimate their weight,” says Hendrick.

Some people are better at assessing weight than others, but it can be deceptive comparing animals that are short and stocky versus tall and leggy, or long-bodied or short-backed and thick.

The average of the herd is what producers often go by when running cattle through for delousing/deworming treatments and setting the dose gun for a certain dose. The problem with that is there’s often a swing of 100 to 200 pounds either way in a group, according to Henrick.

“The ideal situation is to have a scale at your squeeze chute, so you could dose each animal correctly,” he says. “This is impractical when

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animal Healt h

treating animals out on the range, but a scale in your chute system is very helpful.”

When using a topical, pour-on product for deworming or delousing, follow label directions for dose, and make sure you apply it all the way from the withers to the tail-head. Some delousing products also recommend applying it along the neck and on the poll.

“Some producers seem to feel that as long as it hits the animal, it’s acceptable, but sometimes it doesn’t all get on the animal,” says Hendrick.“Putting it down the middle of the back is not always possible or practical, but if people knew how important this is, they might make a better effort to do this, rather than just squirting it on the side.”

Proper application will help control lice, especially biting lice that an injectable product won’t control since biting lice feed on skin and don’t suck blood.

Correct dosage is also important from a food safety standpoint, to avoid residues in the animal by the time it goes for harvest.

“When giving oral medication, or oral dewormers, keep in mind that there’s a chance the animal won’t swallow it,” says Hendrick.

“Make sure you have the right technique, getting it over the tongue (and at the back of the mouth) and that the animal is actually swallowing and not wasting it. If they spit it out you’ve wasted your money and the animal is not treated.Proper restraint is important when medicating animals.

This enables you to use proper technique, whether giving oral medication or an injection. For instance when giving a subcutaneous injection you want the animal restrained so you can make sure the entire dose gets deposited under the skin and doesn’t leak out.” You might think you are giving the proper dose, but if it doesn’t get there, you are under-dosing.

When treating sick calves that might be dehydrated, be aware of the dangers of overdosing with certain antibiotics and anti-inflammatories. “If the calf is severely dehydrated some drugs can be very hard on the kidneys and other organs. Since calves are so small, it doesn’t take much for them to become severely dehydrated if they have scours,” says Hendrick.

An overdose of anti-inflammatory medications tends to damage the kidneys if there’s not enough fluid to dilute them when they are being excreted in the urine. “A calf’s body generally contains a higher water content than an adult and they also dehydrate more readily,” he says. They would be more likely to suffer kidney damage with overdose of certain drugs.

Their metabolism is also a little different, thus calves may metabolize antibiotics more rapidly, which means that you also need to make sure you are not under-dosing with most

other antibiotics.“In these situations,stick to the high end of the labelled dosage, and not underdose, in calves. Most producers are okay with this because from a dose standpoint, even with a very expensive antibiotic, you are not giving very much to a 100-pound calf — compared with a 1,400-pound cow, dosing by weight.”

Some producers, especially with feedlot cattle, still give medications in feed.

“This is less specific regarding dose because it depends on an animal’s feed intake. Some

animals get more of it than others. If the animal is already sick and off feed, that individual likely won’t get the proper dose. There are also some dewormers and fly control products that are designed to be put in mineral or salt blocks to feed on pasture, but consumption will be quite variable. Are cattle getting enough within that day to actually be effective or are they just getting a low dose while other individuals are getting an overdose? You have no control over dosage in this situation,” says Hendrick. c

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I thought maybe it was me hoping that it worked that well, but ask one of our old cowboys, he just shakes his head and says he just can’t believe how much it changed what we do.”

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www.canadiancattlemen.ca

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 animal h ea lt h

By Debbie Furber

On the trail of bTB

11,500 head sacrificed so far with no source in sight.

The final phase of the investigation begins this month

A

year ago beef producers in parts of Alberta and Saskatchewan were thrown for a loop when an Alberta cow tested positive for bovine tuberculosis (bTB) at a U.S. packing plant.

The ensuing disease investigation by the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) quickly became the largest and most complex beef cattle investigation in its history, says Alberta Beef Producers’ beef specialist, Karin Schmid, who has been the industry’s liaison with the CFIA for this investigation.

The investigation along with routine surveillance at packing plants for bTB lesions are key parts of Canada’s bTB eradication program. National control efforts date back to 1923, but the real turning point in the battle with this disease occurred in 1978 when a herd depopulation policy came into effect. By 1985 the World Organization for Animal Health Canada declared Canada statistically free of bTB. “This case doesn’t change that,” says Schmid. “But the thing with eradication programs is we have to take what may at the time seem like severe steps to make sure we are stamping it out so we don’t get reoccurrences that could affect our trade status.”

As of August 11, 11,500 cattle had been tested and humanely slaughtered, including all cows and calves from the original infected herd, which has six confirmedpositive cases to date, and 18 high-risk herds that had some direct contact to the first herd.

High-risk herds were “presumed to be infected” by commingling with the infected herd on community pasture in the past five years giving them an equal risk of exposure to the disease.

All reactors to a caudal-fold skin test were re-examined to confirm the bacteria were the same strain as the first case.

The meat from non-reactors was permitted to enter the domestic food supply.

Approximately 500 of the 11,500 cattle tested were reactors and came from either herds that had fence line contact with the infected herd or were trace-out herds that took in cattle from the infected

22

herd in the past five years. Post-mortems were done on all 500 and tissues tested when indicated.

Schmid says it’s not unusual to get two to four per cent false positives with the caudal-fold skin test due to cross-reactions with mycobacteria species, other than Mycobacterium bovis, the bug that causes bTB. Followup blood tests helped screen out false positives or at least narrow down the number of false negatives. The final diagnosis is confirmed by culturing lymphnode tissue to see if the mycobacteria will grow within 12 weeks.

Infected and presumed-infected premises remain in quarantine until they are cleaned up and disinfected and stay clean for 45 days at an average 12 C, at which point they can be restocked.

Trace-out herds are quarantined until the testing is completed. By August 11, 92 premises with approximately 17,500 animals had been released from quarantine with tests on another 1,000 head on 13 sites still being processed.

There is an option for early release from quarantine when reactors show no signs of disease upon post-mortem although certain records must be kept until culture tests confirm the negative status. Some producers turned down this option.

As of mid-June, CFIA had paid out $37.2 million in compensation for animals ordered destroyed. Another $5.9 million was paid out through the Canada-Alberta Bovine Tuberculosis Assistance Initiative to cover extraordinary costs involved in feeding and caring for quarantined cattle, cleaning and disinfecting the premises, and interest on loans.

Trace-in testing underway

Schmid says trace-in testing of operations that supplied cattle to the infected herd in the past five years will start in September and is expected to wrap up in February.

Testing of this group was postponed until fall to avoid putting additional stress on the cows during calving and so they could go to pasture.

C a t t l e m e n · S E P TEM B E R 2 0 1 7

Karin Schmid

One trace-in herd of special interest because it was the birthplace of one of the six positive cases on the infected farm was tested early on and found to be free from bTB. There are as many as 200 trace-in herds of interest covering some 60,000 animals.

Most are in Alberta and Saskatchewan, with a couple in British Columbia and Manitoba. As a first step the producers completed epidemiological questionnaires during the summer to establish or refute their possible connection to the infected herd.

These herds will be placed under quarantines for about four weeks as the cattle are being tested. CFIA staff hope to begin testing about 10 new herds per week.

Animals that test positive will be subject to post-mortem and further laboratory testing, which could extend the farm’s quarantine period up to four months.

Delaying the testing of trace-in herds may seem somewhat counterintuitive, but as Schmid points out these herds are considered low-risk, the same as any herd with no known contact with the index herd in the past five years.

“Had the disease been simmering in another herd somewhere, it would have been caught at slaughter through routine surveillance,” she adds.

Continued on page 24

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Continued from page 22

No direct link or smoking gun has been found so far and, in truth, Schmid says the source of this infection may never be found.

Wildlife doesn’t seem a likely source. More than 1,250 elk taken from the Suffield base since last fall showed no signs of infection.

The strain of Mycobacterium bovis in Alberta was first seen in Mexico, but that’s not to say that it came to Canada from Mexico. It has since been detected in cattle in some U.S. states as well.

For more details on the current situation, visit www.inspection.gc.ca and search for Bovine TB Investigation-Western Canada. c

bTB lesions in the lung.

 Co m m u n icat i o n

We’ve learned a few things “We had a very good meeting with the CFIA, industry groups and some producers in the room to talk about what we could do better in future events and how we could make the fall trace-in investigation go more smoothly. Communication was the big one,” Karin Schmid told the audience at the University of Calgary’s beef cattle conference in June.

After getting off to a rocky start, the CFIA soon began holding industry calls at least weekly, attending town hall meetings, and posting detailed information on its website.

“They got very good at sharing information and inviting me to meetings,” she says.

Schmid, in turn, began posting updates to share with producers via email, media and the Alberta Beef Producers website.

She was unable to pass on any information to those directly affected due to privacy laws, unless they signed up for her email feed.

“This is a very difficult situation for the producers, but they and their communities really banded together to look after each other and showed strength, resilience and patience with the process,” she adds.

“It’s also very hard on the people doing the investigations… trying to sort out herds to try to save some of the cattle.”

That raises a point in favour of traceability and keeping good records on the movement of animals. In a couple of instances, producer records did save parts of their herd from depopulation.

If the agreed-to Cattle Implementation Plan had been in place — basically reading cattle in at new premises — Schmid believes the investigation would have been completed by now.

The caudal-fold skin test is the internationally accepted screening test for bTB, however false positives with this test are a problem. CFIA regularly examines new live-animal screening tests as they appear; however, many of the tests developed in other countries over the last 30 years aren’t sensitive to the strains of Mycobacterium bovis seen in Canada.

Policy updates are likely to stem from this investigation, as well. For example, horses, dogs and cats on infected premises will be considered low-risk unless there is reason to believe otherwise. Trace-in and trace-out activities are being limited to the original infected herd instead of involving all of the presumed-infected herds.

Compensation programs need some work, as well. The outstanding question is whether extraordinary costs producers face when placed under quarantine should be covered under the regulations.

Finally, work is progressing on formalizing industry’s involvement in the emergency operations centre for future animal health events. “I can’t say enough good things about this process,” says Schmid. “We learned a lot from the CFIA and they learned a lot from us.”

24

C a t t l e m e n · S E P TEM B E R 2 0 1 7

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 animal h ea lt h

By Heather Smith Thomas

Watch for Urinary Stones

O

ccasionally cattle suffer from kidney stones or bladder stones, just like humans. These are called urinary calculi, and are mineralized clumps in the urinary tract. In cattle, bladder stones are more common than kidney stones.

Small ones usually pass out with urine and are not a problem, but sometimes stones become caught and create a blockage. This happens more frequently in males and only rarely in females because females have a shorter, larger urethra. The urethra in the male makes a curve as it comes out to the prepuce, and stones may get caught in that bend. Blockages occur more commonly in steers than in bulls; the passage is slightly larger in the intact male than in the castrated animal. Stones can sometimes be a winter problem if cattle are not drinking enough, which can happen in cold weather.

Dr. Bart Lardner, research scientist at the Western Beef Development Center and adjunct professor in the department of animal and poultry science at the University of Saskatchewan says diet can be a major factor and is part of the challenge of prevention.

For that reason stones are more often an issue in a feedlot.

A growing calf in a backgrounding or feedlot setting will be exposed to a higher concentrate diet with more cereal grain, which may alter the calcium-phosphorus ratio. The feedlot diet may be higher in phosphorus than a pasture diet, and this could be an issue, he says.

“There may be stress of trucking, not drinking enough, stress of changing diets, and so on.”

Dr. Steve Hendrick of the Coaldale Veterinary Clinic in Alberta, however, says stones are less common today than in the past, partly because feedlot diets are more balanced now.

Water sources at a feedlot are usually adequate, as well, to ensure there is plenty of fresh water summer and winter.

Dehydration can lead to urinary stones, and could potentially occur at other times of year if cattle don’t have access to water, or the water source dries up in hot weather. It’s not just the quantity of water, but also the quality. Water high in sulfates or other minerals might contribute to stone formation.

26

Dr. Bart Lardner

Urinary stones discovered at necropsy.

Photo by Steve Hendrick

Dr. Steve Hendrick

Stones form in the bladder when minerals in the urine start clumping around some type of nidus. It could be cells inside the bladder that naturally slough off. Minerals start clustering around that material and form calculi. Small crystals generally pass easily.

“If water is restricted, however, urine is more concentrated, the animal won’t urinate as frequently and these calculi are not as readily flushed out, and grow larger,” Hendrick says. When that happens, the stones may get big enough to become stuck in the urethra.

“When cattle are on pasture, eating grass, the stones tend to be made up of silica from the ash content of the grass. It would partly depend on the type of pasture, whether native or tame, but we do see some high ash content even on some of our tame pas-

tures. I’ve been surprised sometimes when doing feed analysis, looking at some of the pastures; it’s not uncommon to see levels as high as 10 to 12 per cent ash. Some plant species like kochia are even higher,” he says.

“These plants may not be what the animals are generally eating, but if the pasture gets dry or you get into drought conditions, having restricted access to water and eating different types of plants or plants that are more mature may make a difference. The ash content goes up as the plant matures.

Dry matter and nutrient levels change.”

When urinary stones occur in pastured animals, Hendrick says they are commonly made up of silicates, but with certain plants there can be oxalates as well. “In the feedlot a high grain diet, with more phosphorus, can

C a t t l e m e n · S E P TEM B E R 2 0 1 7

www.canadiancattlemen.ca

animal health

also lead to stone formation. With higher levels of phosphorus we need to provide more calcium to balance that diet,” he explains.

“If a stone becomes lodged in the urethra it blocks the passage of urine, creating pain and pressure. The signs would include going off feed, discomfort (kicking at the belly), dribbling small amounts of urine, or straining.

“We often see a pumping of the tail as the animal tries to pass urine, and it may look like he is constipated, trying to poop,” says Hendrick.

“There may be swelling between the hind legs, down along the sheath. This means that the urethra has ruptured and urine is seeping out into the surrounding tissues. Or it may be a ‘water belly’ where the bladder has burst. At that point the animal may initially be more comfortable (as the pressure has been relieved), but if it’s not dealt with fairly soon it becomes a problem having urine in the abdomen. It’s very irritating and also causes infection, which can be fatal.

“It’s not uncommon for urinary stones to lodge in the urethra. There are a couple of spots in steers or bulls where they might get stuck. One place is an S-shaped curve (the Sigmoid flexure) that tends to be a bottleneck. The other common spot for a stone to lodge is just after the urethra leaves the bladder, where it has to go around the pelvis. We call that part of the pelvis the ischium. As the urethra bends around the ischium, and goes down between the hind legs, this is a narrowed place where we may find stones lodged, as well,” says Hendrick.

If the producer recognizes signs soon enough, and enlists veterinary help for the animal, a blockage can be removed before the bladder or urethra ruptures.

“Some people talk about crushing the stones so the particles can pass on through, but some stones are very hard.

It depends on the type of material they are made of,” says Hendrick.

“More commonly we do a surgery called urethrostomy which means carefully dissecting out the urethra and pulling it out the back end of the calf, so the urine exits the body beneath the rectum, like a female.”

This surgery is often termed a high heifer.

Sometimes the bladder needs some time to recover after being stretched so much, due to the blockage and accumulation of urine.

The veterinarian may put a catheter into the bladder and leave it there for a couple of days to help drain it. This gives the bladder time to rest and heal. Then when the catheter is removed the animal can urinate on its own. www.canadiancattlemen.ca

This is not a long-term solution, however.

“The surgical removal of a stone and rerouting the urethra is a salvage procedure, just to keep the animal alive and allow it to recover enough to be butchered,” says Hendrick.

If left, these animals rarely go on to finish at a typical weight.

“There is a tendency for some of these animals to re-block even after surgery, or have subsequent issues,” says Hendrick.

Urinary blockage tends to be more com-

mon in early-castrated steers than bulls, because the urethra may be smaller.

“That’s not a good reason to delay castration, however,” cautions Hendrick. “The incidence of stones is fairly rare, and we can manage those cases. It’s not worth the other risks and problems associated with delayed castration, which is much harder on the animal, with setback in growth,” says Hendrick.

Feed management, with diet and adequate clean water are the keys to prevention. c

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27

 Nutritio n

By John McKinnon

“If You Talk the Talk, You Gotta Walk the Walk”

M

y August column focused on alternatives to current growth promoting technology. My general conclusion was that while there are alternatives on the market, they fail to achieve the same beneficial production responses as seen with implants, ionophores and prudent use of antibiotics. While I applaud and encourage continued research into new/alternative technology to promote production efficiency, I worry that as an industry we are reacting too strongly to “perceived” market demands. Yes, there is a segment of consumers that want natural or organic beef and again, I applaud producers, packers and retailers who target those markets. It seems to me, however, that when I go to stores such as Costco, Walmart or Safeway or restaurant chains such as McDonald’s, the vast majority of consumers are interested in high quality, safe, wholesome beef. As well, consumers are increasingly demanding assurances that their food is raised in an environmentally sustainable fashion and that animals are treated humanely.

This seems to me to be where a disconnect occurs.

While industry groups nationally and provincially promote such production practices through development of codes of practice for animal care — the Canadian Roundtable for Sustainable Beef initiative and the Verified Beef Production Plus (VBP+) program — at the ranch or feedlot level there does not seem to be a sense of urgency in meeting the demands of today’s consumer. The general attitude seems to be “my cattle are produced in a safe, humane and environmentally friendly manner so why do I need to provide assurances” or “if I do so, will I get paid for it”?

Let’s look at the VBP+ program as an example.

This program is led nationally by the Canadian Cattleman’s Association (CCA) and delivered by provincial beef organizations or though non-profit corporations. It has its roots in the long-standing On Farm Food Safety Program run by the CCA and was known as the Verified Beef Production (VBP) program. VBP focused on educating producers with regard to safe food production practices with an emphasis on sound animal health practices and prudent feed and water management, pesticide use and cattle transportation practices. VBP provided producers with a set of standard operating practices (SOPs) that could followed voluntarily or one could sign up for an annual on-farm audit program.

To react to potential issues with infectious disease and consumer concerns with how their food is raised, the program was recently expanded (i.e. now known as VBP+) to include modules and SOPs related to biosecurity, environmental stewardship and animal care.

28

C a t t l e m e n · S E P TEM B E R 2 0 1 7

Recommended production practices are for the most part based on long-standing animal husbandry practices found on most beef operations. What is important, however, is that they are tied to current national standards for animal care (Code of Practice for Beef Cattle Care), biosecurity (Canadian Beef Cattle OnFarm Biosecurity Standard) and provincial environmental farm plans. The program, while voluntary, has at its core, an audit program that allows producers to showcase their operation as one that follows and documents sustainable beef production practices.

As indicated, there has been a lot of industry effort both nationally and provincially to implement the VBP and VBP+ programs. While a significant number of producers have been trained in many of the SOPs put forward by the program, the reality is that relatively few have become registered producers who undergo the audit process. One of the reasons cited for not going the next step, is that there is no current economic advantage to offset the increased work load associated with the record-keeping required for the audit. While this may be true, it is a situation that would change quickly if packers and retailers start to demand beef produced under such a program. Further, it seems to me there is a bigger picture we should be looking at. As a registered VBP+ producer who is part of a larger collective of registered cow-calf and feedlot operations across the country, your involvement facilitates the industry’s efforts to communicate to consumers both nationally and internationally that Canadian beef is indeed high quality and produced in a sustainable manner that includes a focus on food safety, animal care and environmental stewardship. More importantly, by participating in the audit process, you document to the world that your beef is produced in such a manner.

You might come back with the argument “I already produce beef in such a fashion, why do I need to document it?” I am not sure that argument holds much weight with today’s consumer, who as indicated above is increasingly interested in assurances as to how his/ her food is produced and is not afraid to communicate these demands though their spending practices. It is worthwhile pointing out that other Canadian industries such as poultry and dairy have taken note and implemented mandatory quality assurance programs.

I don’t think many of us want a mandatory program, but if we want to maintain consumer confidence in Canadian beef, as an industry we need to move to a system that not only reacts to consumer demands, but one that also provides the assurances needed to maintain that confidence. In the words of a famous football coach, “if you talk the talk, you gotta walk the walk.” c

John McKinnon is a beef cattle nutritionist at the University of Saskatchewan

www.canadiancattlemen.ca

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T.J. Larson Box 1043, Claresholm, Alta. T0L 0T0 Ph: 403-625-2911 • Fax: 403-625-2151 email: claresholmbeef@gmail.com Lot capacity: 13,000

highland feeders

Mike Kotelko Box 400, Vegreville, Alta. T9C 1R4 Ph: 780-768-2466 • Fax: 780-768-3888 Cell: 780-632-1031 email: mkotelko@highlandbeef.com Website: www.highlandbeef.com Lot capacity: 36,000

1 2 4 5 7 8 Cleardale Colony

bear trap feeders

Bob or Don Lowe Box 1499, Nanton, Alta. T0L 1R0 Ph: 403-646-5550 • Fax: 646-5697 Lot capacity: 4,000

1 5 2 9

Mike S. Stahl Box 159, Cleardale, Alta. T0H 3Y0 Ph: 780-685-2800 • Fax: 780-685-2704 Cell: 780-834-7165 Lot capacity: 600

1 5 2 8 7 High River colony

Martin & Ed Box 5610, High River, Alta. T1V 1M7 Ph/Fax: 403-395-2107 Cell: 652-8758 Lot capacity: 2,500 9

9 2 8

Blue Ridge colony

Eli Wurz Box 121 Mountain View, Alta. T0K 1N0 Ph: 403-626-2388 • Fax: 626-2394 Cell: 359-3287 Lot capacity: 350 9

Codesa Colony

Box 300, Eaglesham, Alta. T0H 1H0 Ph: 780-359-3022 • Fax: 359-3004 Cell: 837-4342 Lot capacity: 2,500

1 5 9 2 8 4

highway 21 feeders ltd.

7

de wilde feeders

CAIRNS FEEDYARDS LTD.

Marco or Adrian Box 142, Monarch, Alta. T0L 1M0 Ph/Fax: 403-824-3635 Cell: 403-634-4026/634-3352 email: adriandw@shockware.com Lot capacity: 5,000

Larry Cairns Box 8, Madden, Alta. T0M 1L0 Ph/Fax: 403-946-5897 Cell: 403-333-2400 Lot capacity: 5,000

1 5 9 2 8 4

1 5 9 2 8 4

calhoun cattle co. ltd.

Rod, Carol or Jason Calhoun Box 72, Swalwell, Alta. T0M 1Y0 Ph: 403-546-2655 • Fax: 403-546-3831 Cell: 403-333-5440/333-5438

1 5 9 2 8 4

1 5 9 2 8 4

grandview cattle feeders Ltd.

Claresholm Beef producers ltd.

Barnett Farms

7

Jonust Farms Ltd.

Ben Wurz, Johnny Wurz Box 40, Carmangay, Alta. T0L 0N0 Ph: 403-643-2456 • Fax: 770-8020 Cell: 795-9806/795-9805 Lot capacity: 5,000

Cattleland feedyards ltd.

9 2 8

1 9 2 8 4

Carmangay Colony Feeders

7

Diamond 8 Cattle co.

Cam VanEe Box 100 Pincher Creek, Alta. T0K 1W0 Ph: 403-627-1525 • Fax: 403-627-1524 Cell: 403-894-2178 email: barjw@hotmail.com Lot capacity: 7,500

1 5 9 2 8 4

Ed Miller/ Lyle Miller Box 60, Acme, Alta. T0M 0A0 Ph: 403-546-2278 • Fax: 403-546-3709 Cell: 403-651-8637 (Ed) 403-888-3973 (Lyle) email: scottbrady@highway21group.com lylemiller@highway21group.com Lot capacity: 20,000

1 5 2 8 4

7

Bradley Raugust • Walter Raugust R.R. 1, Ponoka, Alta. T4J 1R1 Ph: 403-783-2726 • 403-783-2202 Fax: 403-704-2302 Cell: 403-350-5265 • 403-350-8023 email: rbraugust@hotmail.ca or blackelk@telusplanet.net Lot capacity: 1,000

9 2 8 jubilee feedlot

Rob Denman Box 5510, Westlock, Alta. T7P 2P5 Ph: 780-349-2476 • Fax: 780-349-5414 Cell: 780-349-1755 email: rob@jubileefarms.ca Lot capacity: 6,500

1 9 2 8 4 Kasko Cattle Co. Ltd.

Ryan Kasko Box 1266, Coaldale, Alta. T1M 1N1 Ph: 403-345-4301 • Fax: 403-345-3778 Cell: 403-795-2246 email: ryan@kaskocattle.com Lot capacity: 25,000

1 5 2 8 4

7

K-Belt farms

Bruce Konynenbelt Box 90, Nobleford, Alta. T0L 1S0 Ph: 403-824-3431 • Fax: 403-824-3258 Cell: 403-634-4744 email: kbeltfam@shockware.com Lot capacity: 4,000+ 9 2

Kenwynn Farms Ltd.

Brian McKinnon Box 129, Carseland, Alta. T0J 0M0 Ph: 403-934-4114 • Fax: 403-934-2122 Lot capacity: 7,500

1 5 9 2 8 KeHo lake colony

David R. Wurtz Box 125, Barons, Alta. T0L 0G0 Ph: 403-757-2330 • Fax: 403-757-2337 Lot capacity: 1,000

1 8 4 KAV Ltd.

Myron Klassen Box 488, Linden, Alta. T0M 1J0 Ph: 403-312-3577 • Fax: 403-546-2445 email: myron@kavltd.ca Lot capacity: 5,000

1 2 4 5 8 9 Larson custom Feeders ltd.

hWY 52 beef producers ltd.

Dwight Morhart/ Ryan Kasko Box 1250, Raymond, Alta. T0K 2S0 Ph: 403-752-2333 • Fax: 403-756-3434 Cell: 403-795-7394 email: hwy52@shockware.com Website: www.kaskocattle.com Lot capacity: 15,000

1 5 9 2 8 4

7

7

T.J. Larson Box 1227, Fort Macleod, Alta. T0L 0Z0 Ph: 403-553-3110 • Fax: 403-553-2828 Cell: 403-394-6496 email: larsonfeeders@gmail.com Lot capacity: 6,000

1 2 4 5 7 8 9 J.F. Murray farms

Shawn Murray Box 86, Picture Butte, Alta. T0K 1V0 Ph: 403-732-4339 • Fax: 403-732-4187 Lot capacity: 9,000

1 5 9 2 8 4 1custom order buying and selling

5 market analysis

9

backgrounding

2 health program

8 pen sharing

4 trucking

7

7hedging

Park road farms ltd.

Allan Slomp P.O. Box 419, Nobleford, Alta. T0L 1S0 Ph: 403-824-3676 • Fax:403- 824-3677 email: prf@xplornet.com Lot capacity: 4,500

9

2

penridge feeders

Office Box 4, Swalwell, Alta. T0M 1Y0 Ph: 403-546-0015 Lot capacity: 4,000

1 5 9 2 8 7 Poplar Lodge Ranch Ltd.

Will Porter Box 12, Czar, Alta. T0B 0Z0 Ph: 780-857-2056 • Fax: 780-857-2057 email: willporter64@gmail.com Lot capacity: 3,500

1 9 2 8 RJ Feeders

Ralph or Josie Kientz R.R. 1, Olds, Alta. T4H 1P2 Ph/Fax: 403-631-2373 Cell: 403-994-0581 Lot capacity: 1,700

1 9 2 8 5 4 Rocky ridge land & cattle

Darcy Stewart/ Loren Stewart Box 65, Site 19, R.R. 2 Strathmore, Alta. T1P 1K5 Ph: 403-934-4426 • Fax: 403-934-9998 Cell 403-888-5083 Lot capacity: 3,000 9 Roulston Farms

Rob Roulston Box 152, Bruce, Alta. T0B 0R0 Ph: 780-688-2284 • Fax: 780-688-2289 Lot capacity: 1,000

9 2 8 Schooten & Sons Custom Feedyard Ltd.

John Schooten • Shane Schooten Cody Schooten • Justin Schooten Box 148, Diamond City, Alta. T0K 0T0 Ph: 403-381-3883 • Fax: 403-381-8809 Cell: 403- 634-1459 (John) 4 03-634-1535 (Shane) 403-634-4116 (Cody) 403-315-5679 (Justin) email: s chootenandsons@yahoo.ca Lot capacity: 40,000

1 2 4 5 7 9 8

Schwartzkopf farms Ltd.

Bert or Brian Schwartzkopf Box 743, Coalhurst, Alta. T0L 0V0 Ph: 403-381-4219 • Fax: 403-394-2143 Cell: 403-360-2973 Lot capacity: 4,000 9

Shelter Valley land & cattle

stafford feeders ltd.

1 9 2 8 4

7

stankievech ranches

Glen & Clare Stankievech Box 389, Trochu, Alta. T0M 2C0 Ph: 403-442-2242 • Fax: 403-442-3169 Cell: 588-6325 • Wintering cows Lot capacity: 2,000

Sam McQuaid Box 131, Czar, Alta. T0B 0Z0 Ph: 780-857-2720 • Fax: 780-857-2827 Cell: 780-209-2373 Manager, Chris McQuaid • 780-806-6107 email: svlc@telus.net Lot capacity: 38,000

1 9 4 2 7

V.C. feeders

Ken & Chris Box 2243, Athabasca, Alta. T9S 2B7 Ph: 780-675-9207 • Fax: 780-675-5095 Lot capacity: 6,000

5 9 2 8

Sam McQuaid Cell: 780-209-2373 Lethbridge, Alta.

Manager: Corey Conan Cell: 403-894-1020 Lot capacity: 10,000

Murray Stauffer Jack Puddifant R.R. 3, Eckville, Alta. T0M 0X0 Ph: 403-746-5737 • Fax: 403-746-5739 email: stauff1@xplornet.com

1 5 9 2 8 Ed Stronks Box 870 Picture Butte, Alta. T0K 1V0 Ph: 403-738-4106 • Fax: 403-738-2193 Lot capacity: 14,000

Signal Ridge Farms

Russell Klassen Box 1287, Stettler, Alta. T0C 2L0 Ph: 403-742-9762 • Fax: 403-742-1828 email: info@signalridgefarms.com Lot capacity 2,000

1 5 9 2 8 4 7

1 5 2 8 4

Matt Box 1425, Coaldale, Alta. T1M 1N2 Ph: 403-345-2210 • Fax: 403-345-6844 Cell: 403-382-1667 Lot capacity: 7,500

9 8 2 5 4

John B. Walter R.R. 1, Westlock, Alta. T7P 2N9 Ph: 780-349-3542 • Cell: 780-349-1740 email: sunnybendfarming@gmail.com Lot capacity: 2,000 9 thompson colony feeders

Marvin Tschetter Box 160, Fort Macleod, Alta. T0L 0Z0 Cell: 403-635-0340 Fax: 403-553-2958 Lot capacity: 2,000 9

South Cara Farms Ltd.

Rick Cromarty Box 157, Provost, Alta. T0B 3S0 Ph: 780-753-4767 • Fax: 780-753-4745 Cell: 780-753-8801 email: scfl1@mcsnet.ca

1 9 2 8 5

Tongue creek feeders ltd./ Roseburn ranches ltd.

Peter Morrison Box 5910, High River, Alta. T1V 1P6 Ph: 403-652-7410 • Fax: 403-652-2936 Cell: 403-312-7909 email: cattle@roseburn.net Lot capacity: 16,000/12,000

south island farms ltd.

Scott MacLean Box 249, Bow Island, Alta. T0K 0G0 Ph: 403-545-2422 • Fax: 403-545-2442 Cell: 952-1405 Lot capacity: 6,500

1 5 9 2 8 4

7

7

Sunnybend Feedlot

Slingerland Feeders Ltd.

1 5 4 9 2 8

James Bekkering 6311-56th Ave., Taber, Alta. T1G 1X9 Ph: 403-223-9090 • Fax: 403-223-9061 Lot capacity: 25,000 Uphill feeders

Colby Hansen Box 11, Tawatinaw, Alta. T0G 2E0 Ph: 780-801-2805 • Cell: 780-307-2574 email: Colbyuphill@hotmail.ca Lot capacity: 500

2

Harold Vandenberg Box 454, Coaldale, Alta. T1M 1M5 Ph/Fax: 403-345-3991 Cell: 403-382-7986 email: vanfarm@yahoo.com Lot capacity: 5,000

van Loon farms

Box 54, Tiger Lily, Alta. T0G 2G0 Ph: 780-674-3954 • Fax: 780-674-3502 Cell: 780-206-0024 email: vanloonfarms@gmail.com Lot capacity: 2,000

Vee tee feeders ltd.

Don Davies Box 12220 Lloydminster, Alta. T9V 3C4 Ph: 780-875-6231 • Fax: 780-875-6232 Cell: 780-808-5607 email: veetee@mcsnet.ca Lot capacity: 6,000

1 9 2 8 7 West Ridge farms

Jim Hurt Box 321, Crossfield, Alta. T0M 0S0 Ph: 403-946-4198 Lot capacity: 1,300

9Saskatchewan 2 bezan land & Livestock Ltd.

Layton Bezan Box 1726, Regina, Sask. S4P 3C6 Ph: 306-775-0412 • Fax: 306-775-0444 Cell: 306-537-8898 Lot capacity: 1,200

1 5 9 2 4

7

birch island land & cattle co.

Shayne Yewsuk • Mark Herman Box 236, Rhein, Sask. S0A 3K0 Ph: 306-273-4600 • Fax: 306-273-4601 email: birchisland@imagewireless.ca Lot capacity: 8,500

1 5 9 2 8 4

tfS Expanse Ltd.

9

H & R Vandenberg Farms

1 9 2

stronks Feedlot

1 9 2 4 7

9 2 4

1 5 9 2 8 4

stauffer farm feedlot

Shelter Valley Custom Feeding

Martin M. Stahl Veteran Colony Veteran, Alta. T0C 2S0 Ph: 403-575-2169 • Fax: 403-575-2190 Lot capacity: 1,000

7

Burnt out creek ranch

Ernie Wicks • Jordan Kowal Cody Wicks Box 566, Tisdale, Sask. S0E 1T0 Ph: 306-873-3702 • Fax: 306-873-5046 Cell: 306-873-0129 Lot capacity: 4,000

1 5 9 8 4 Ceylon Gap Feeders Inc.

Box 128, Ceylon, Sask. S0C 0T0 Ph: 306-454-2250 • Fax: 306-454-2216 Email: admin@ceylongapfeeders.com Lot capacity: 12,000

1 5 2 1custom order buying and selling

5 market analysis

9

backgrounding

2 health program

8 pen sharing

4 trucking

7hedging

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REVALOR® is a registered trademark of ® Intervet International B.V. Used under license.

MERCK® is a registered trademark of Merck Canada Inc. © 2017 Intervet Canada Corp. All rights reserved.

Revalor ad Feedlot Guide.indd 1

2017-07-11 2:52 PM

dietrich farms ltd.

Jim Dietrich Box 68, Mendham, Sask. S0N 1P0 Ph: 306-628-4249 • Cell: 306-628-7170 email: jdietrich@sasktel.net Lot capacity: 2,200

1 5 9 2 8 4 Excellerator Genetics

Ron Dietrich Box 116, Moosomin, Sask. S0G 3N0 Ph: 306-435-9381 email: e xcellerator@sasktel.net Website: www.excelleratorgenetics.com Lot capacity: 4,000

1 9 2 4 7

Ross L-Seven Ranch

Chad Ross • Brian Ross Box 1087, Estevan, Sask. S4A 2H7 Ph: 306-634-7301 • Cell: 306-421-6346 email: chadross@xplornet.ca • Custom grazing • Heifer A.I. • Cow/bull wintering Lot capacity: 2,500 9 2

Manitoba Bar M Stock Farms Ltd.

Brad McDonald P.O. Box 1345 Portage la Prairie, Man. R1N 3L5 email: cattlemen@hotmail.ca Ph/Fax: 204-239-5928 Cell: 204-856-6293 Lot capacity: 1,800

Seven L Feeders Ltd

Kelly Friesen • Danny Reimer Porcupine Plain, Sask. S0C 0M0 Ph: 306-813-7033 • Fax: 306-889-4550 Lot capacity: 10,000

9 2 Box 188, Kenton, Man. R0M 0Z0 Ph/Fax: 204-838-2003 Cell: 204-365-7149 email: johnsdm@goinet.ca Lot capacity: 1,000

1 9 2 8 4

Larry Hagerty General Delivery, Box 11 Stony Beach, Sask. S0G 4S0 Ph: 306-345-2523 • Fax: 306-345-2085 Lot capacity: 3,000

1 9 2 8 4 M & T Feedlot

Greg Thompson Box 336, Moose Jaw, Sask. S6H 4N9 Ph: 306-694-5314 • Fax: 306-693-8822 Cell: 306-631-7413 Lot capacity: 3,500

1 5 9 2 8 4

7

McQueen Feedyards

Bill & Dave McQueen Box 35, Tessier, Sask. S0L 3G0 Ph: 306-656-4465 • Fax: 306-656-2042 Lot capacity: 6,000

1 5 2 8 4 perrault feedlot

Perrault brothers Box 182, Ponteix, Sask. S0N 1Z0 Ph: 306-625-3750 • Fax: 306-625-3978 Cell: 306-625-7804 Lot capacity: 1,000

1 5 9 2 8 4

7

purpose Farms Inc.

Jeff Carlson • Cam Buyer Eric Buyer Carnduff, Sask.

Ph: 403-442-3186 • Fax: 403-442-2261 Cell: 403-350-9674 email: jcarlson@xplornet.com Lot capacity: 5,000 1 9 Pound-maker agventures ltd.

Brad Welter Box 519, Lanigan, Sask. S0K 2M0 Ph: 306-365-4281 • Fax: 306-365-4283 email: pma@pound-maker.ca Website: www.pound-maker.ca Lot capacity: 28,500

1 5 2 8 4

7

Red Coat Cattle Feeders Inc.

shur Transport exporting & trucking

Norm Shurygalo Box 308, Beinfait, Sask. S0C 0M0 Ph: 306-388-2329 • Fax: 306-388-2321 Cell: 306-421-3482 email: shurtruck@hotmail.com Lot capacity: 800

1 9 2 8 4 Hamiota feedlot ltd.

Larry Schweitzer Box 610, Hamiota, Man. R0M 0T0 Ph: 204-764-2449 • Fax: 204-764-2264 email: feedlot@goinet.ca Website: www.hamiotafeedlot.com Lot capacity: 13,000

1 5 9 2 8 4 Sunny slope Cattle Ltd.

Don Bowyer Box 1744, Maple Creek, Sask. S0N 1N0 Ph: 306-662-2901 • Fax: 306-662-4450 Lot capacity: 1,500 9 2

9 2 8

Garry or Cindy Box 1152, Altona, Man. R0G 0B0 Ph: 204-829-7706 • Fax: 204-829-3676 Cell: 204-324-7405 Lot capacity: 500

1 5 9 2 4

PEnner feedlot

Phillip Penner • Donavon Penner Box 66, Kelwood, Man. R0J 0Y0 Ph: 204-967-2009 • Fax: 204-967-2070 Cell: 204-212-0221 Lot capacity: 850

1 9 2 4 8 Rocking U feeders

Box 779, MacGregor, Man. R0H 0R0 Ph: 204-685-2264 • Fax: 204-685-2135 email: rockinguf@hotmail.com Lot capacity: 10,000

1 9 2 D&P Rooke Farms

Daniel and Penny Box 68, Alexander, Man. R0K 0K0 Ph: 204-756-2073 • Fax: 204-752-2341 Cell: 204-573-2082 email: daniel@d-pgroup.com

7

willow park ranch

Ben Wurz Box 70, Tessier, Sask. S0L 3G0 Ph: 306-237-9510 • Fax: 237-9511 Cell: 220-0400 Lot capacity: 800

9 T.J. Livestock

1 5 9

Kevin Antworth Box 86, Hazenmore, Sask. S0N 1C0 Ph: 306-264-3844 • Fax: 306-264-3206 Cell: 306-391-9351 email: rccf@yourlink.ca Lot capacity: 18,500

Thor Jonsson General Delivery Oakview, Man. R0C 2K0 Ph: 204-768-2422 • Fax: 768-3393 Cell: 739-3230 email: tjonsson@mts.net Lot capacity: 2,000

1 5 9 2 8 4 7

9 2 8 4 7 milldale farms ltd.

R.R. 1, Norwich, Ont. N0J 1P0 Ph: 519-468-2325 • Fax: 519-468-2326 Cell: 519-532-8748 email: vanker@execulink.com Lot capacity: 550

5 9 2 4 7

Nova Scotia Andrew Van Oostrum R.R. 2, Berwick, N.S. B0P 1E0 Ph: 902-538-7716 • Fax: 902-538-1411 Lot capacity: 400

1 5 9 2 8 4

New Brunswick Davanna Holdings Dean & David Acton

308 Cookville Loop Rd. Cookville, N.B. E4L 2A4 Ph: 506-536-2508 • Fax: 536-2826 Cell: 506-379-0024 email: davanna@xplornet.ca Lot capacity: 1,000

1 9 2 R.A. Farm

Robert Acton, Nathan Phinney, 550 Cookville Road Cookville, N.B. E4L 2A7 Ph: 506-536-2564 • Fax: 506-536-3396 Cell: 506-364-7263 email: rafarms1@xplornet.ca Lot capacity: 2,000

1 2 5 8 9

Prince Edward Island beech hill Farms

127 Beech Hill Road Alberry Plains, P.E.I. C0A 2E0 Ph: 902-651-2173

1 9

9 2 8 15 1custom order buying and selling

R.R. 2, Stratford, Ont. N5A 6S3 Ph: 519-273-7843 • Fax: 519-273-2586 Cell: 519-272-9001 Lot capacity: 900

1 9 2 4

westwood Land & Cattle Company

Kevin Woods Box 6, Moosomin, Sask. S0G 3N0 Ph: 306-435-2102 • Fax: 306-435-4833 Cell: 306-435-7313 Lot capacity: 10,000

Ontario

Van Oostrum Farms

G.C. Klassen and sons

Td3L Hull Ranch

Terry & Debbie Hull Box 160, Willowbrook, Sask. S0A 4P0 Ph/Fax: 306-782-7295 email: tdhull@yourlink.ca Lot capacity: 1,100

9 2 8

1 9 2 8

Tyner Valley Stock farms

Dave Taciuk Box 774, Wakaw, Sask. S0K 4P0 Ph: 306-233-5959 email: d.taciuk@sasktel.net

Mark or Nicholas Symbol Box 18, Group 6, R.R. 1 Anola, Man. R0E 0A0 Ph: 204-866-2683 Lot capacity: 240

Daniel Jeffrey

Dana Johns

hagerty livestock ltd.

Wild Rose cattle ranch

5 market analysis

9

backgrounding

2 health program

8 pen sharing

4

4 trucking

7hedging

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MERCK® is a registered trademark of Merck Canada Inc. © 2017 Intervet Canada Corp. All rights reserved.

Resflor ad Feedlot Guide.indd 1

2017-07-11 2:33 PM

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ZUPREVO® is a registered trademark of ® Intervet International B.V. Used under license.

MERCK® is a registered trademark of Merck Canada Inc. © 2017 Intervet Canada Corp. All rights reserved.

Zuprevo ad Feedlot Guide.indd 1

2017-07-11 2:18 PM

 Free Mar k et R e flect i o n s

By Steve Dittmer

Trump needs to stop

worrying about trade deficits

B

y now, the U.S., Canada and Mexico will have been through the first round of talks for renegotiating NAFTA. It’s expected they will get acquainted, lay their lists on the table and do little substantive in the first session. In early September, the second set of talks will be held in Mexico.

Both Canada and the U.S. have outlined some issues they should be able to agree on: cutting red tape, harmonizing regulations, improving labour standards and including more environmental standards. From agriculture’s standpoint, U.S. agriculture — except for a few fringe groups — has paraded through Washington begging the administration to leave good things alone. That is, except for dairy farmers on both sides of the border, who have some complaints. I understand the Canadian dairy industry is a supply management system and Canada is “fully committed” to defending it. Most American dairymen can’t accurately explain our byzantine system.

But Canadian sources are reporting that Canadian officials, diplomats and businessmen have held 175 in-person meetings with American contacts.

The Canadian government said it has researched everything that might come up and lots that won’t, in order to be ready.

Unless agriculture gets used as pawns in someone else’s game, we may be lucky and stay mostly out of the limelight. But there are issues which could cause trouble, issues regarding trade in general but not agriculture in particular. Take dispute settlement. Canada likes something similar to what’s in NAFTA now. The Trump administration would like to do away with that and substitute something else.

The Trump administration has talked “Buy American,” especially regarding government procurement.

Canada wants that moderated.

That brings us to something that folks on both sides of the border need to understand better. We have been trying to get President Trump and some administration people — who believe trade deficits or trade imbalances matter — to listen to most administration economists and others who say the trade deficit is irrelevant. Canadians need to understand it so they can back their administration in pushing back against Trump’s team on trade deficits.

There are key things to understand regarding a trade deficit. It is not a deficit in the sense that money has been lost or something is owed. It simply means that a country has imported more goods and services than it has exported. That country has a pile of imported goods — think of them as assets or inventory — and less cash on hand, because it spent the money to buy imports, either to use, sell or use as manufacturing inputs. www.canadiancattlemen.ca

Some economists look at trade as some kind of international game, wherein the one who exports more than they import, wins. That’s not it. Many factors are important, like the type of economy a country has, its stage of development, how much manufacturing it does, how much it borrows or saves, how big the country’s economy is and what a trading partner offers. It also has to do with a country’s national nature. Americans are not big savers. They tend to borrow and spend. They have a developed, huge national economy, a sizeable wealthy class and major manufacturing capabilities. So they tend to import a half-trillion more dollars’ worth of goods and services than they export every year.

So we have a bigger stack of goods on hand and other countries have dollars we’ve sent them in return for goods. They tend to spend those dollars in dollardenominated things like U.S. Treasury bills, U.S. goods or U.S. goods on the next turn that they can use as manufacturing inputs. Is there a loser here?

The U.S. has the world’s largest economy, so there are many countries we trade with that do not have enough money to buy enough from us to offset what we want from them. I like to use certain food commodities as examples. The U.S. can’t raise cacao beans, coffee beans and bananas. Yet we have a voracious appetite for chocolate, coffee and bananas.

The Third World countries that raise cacao beans and the South American countries that supply coffee and bananas simply do not have the cash flow to buy enough to offset the tremendous pile of goods we buy from them.

Is it our government’s job to penalize its citizens by cutting off the supply of chocolate, coffee and bananas each spring, by setting up quotas to prevent a trade imbalance with that country? That’s ludicrous.

The French economist Frederic Bastiat ridiculed the whole concept of trade deficits, and through examples, shows that national customs houses only count exports and imports. They do not account for profits or losses on the goods traded, only the incoming and outgoing value. Taken to the ridiculous extreme, he points out that France’s trade deficit could disappear if their ships loaded with export goods sank in the ocean. There would be lots of exports on the national books but no imports, so voila, no trade deficit.

The U.S. trade deficit with Canada tends to be small, a tribute to the export mentality and the hard work of Canadians. But Trump could be concerned it will grow, so they need to be on their guard that provisions put in to deal with Mexico’s much larger deficit don’t burn Canada. c

Steve Dittmer is the CEO of Agribusiness Freedom Foundation, a non-profit group promoting free market principles throughout the food chain.

He can be reached at steve@agfreedom.ag.

C a t t l e m e n · S E P TEM B E R 2 0 1 7

29

 animal h ea lt h

By Debbie Furber

The Search Continues for TB and JD Vaccines “

W

e could be lucky and find our vaccine candidates for bovine tuberculosis and Johne’s disease within a month, or it could take a year and a half. We hope within a two-year window we will have candidates ready to test out in the field.”

These encouraging words come from Dr. Andrew Potter, CEO at the University of Saskatchewan’s VIDO-InterVac (Vaccine and Infectious Disease Organization-International Vaccine Centre) where the research group started work on developing the two vaccines about a year and a half ago.

“People have been trying for decades to develop vaccines for these diseases without much success, so we started with no preconceived ideas. We are testing everything these bacteria produce as potential candidates,” he says.

JD is caused by Mycobacterium avium ssp. paratuberculosis (MAP) and bTB is caused by Mycobacterium bovis.

“They each produce several hundred potential proteins that are potential targets for the immune system of cattle, primarily those located on the surface of the bacteria and are therefore ‘visible’ to the host upon infection,” Potter explains.

The group is working with specific individual proteins to produce sub-unit vaccines. In 1991, VIDO’s vaccine against shipping fever caused by Mannheimia haemolytica was a world-first vaccine of this type, but this approach hasn’t been used in the past for developing bTB and JD vaccines.

Vaccines against bTB and JD available in other countries are killed or live wholecell vaccines. The main drawback of live whole-cell vaccines is that they can’t be used in animals being treated with antibiotic because the antibiotic kills the vaccine as well. Some countries have banned whole-cell JD vaccines because they interfere with diagnostic tests for bTB. A new approach since 2000 called reverse vaccinology is being used to develop the new subunit vaccines. It begins with sequencing the genome of the pathogen. Bioinformatics software then identifies components that could be potential antigens to trigger the animal’s

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immune system to produce antibodies.

The antigens are then cloned for testing one by one in cattle (or animal models as is the case when developing vaccines for use in people). The most suitable antigen that produces the best immune response is formulated into a vaccine prototype to be field-tested for effectiveness and safety before commercialization.

This project also involves developing a companion test for each vaccine to differentiate between vaccinated animals and those infected naturally. Potter says this won’t be difficult to do once they identify the candidates.

As a research institute, VIDO-InterVac only produces enough vaccine for the field tests and licenses its patented technologies to commercial partners who work with regulators to register the vaccines in their target markets.

“These vaccines won’t necessarily go to the highest bidder,” Potter adds. “We will carefully select our commercial partner because the vaccines must be available to Canadians first because they are the ones who paid for it.”

This project has received $7.5 million in funding through multiple sources including Genome Canada, Genome Prairie, Genome British Columbia and the Government of Saskatchewan. Animal and lab work was done at VIDOInterVac with the University of British Columbia undertaking some of the lab work and the universities of Saskatchewan and Calgary looking after the social and economic work.

Why farmers vaccinate

Dr. Albert Ugochukwu and professor Peter Phillips with the Centre for the Study of Science and Innovation Policy, Johnson-Shoyama Graduate School of Public Policy at the University of Saskatchewan, explored the livestock industry’s responsiveness and farmers’ attitudes toward animal vaccines.

Starting with a review of the global prevalence, surveillance and control programs for bTB and JD in Europe, the U.S., Australia and Canada, they report that these two diseases are among the

C a t t l e m e n · S E P TEM B E R 2 0 1 7

Dr. Andrew Potter

Dr. Albert Ugochukwu

most prevalent endemic bovine diseases worldwide. Both are slow, progressive diseases that erode production efficiencies, profits, competitiveness and public confidence. Both pose human health risks, although that of JD has not yet been proven.

Last winter, they surveyed Canadian beef and dairy producers in search of answers to the overarching question, “what motivates farmers to use vaccines?”

The voluntary survey was carried out through dairy and beef producer associations across Canada and 234 producers responded. Of those, 105 were from the dairy side and 129 were beef producers (77 cow-calf, 25 backgrounders, 22 feedlot, and five other).

The first question identified an impediment to uptake of the new subunit vaccines given that approximately one-quarter of the respondents figured their herds weren’t at risk of getting a JD or bTB infection. Of the 75 per cent who acknowledged some risk, fewer than seven per cent viewed JD as a serious risk and fewer than two per cent viewed bTB as a serious risk.

Another question red-flagged an issue for veterinarians and producer associations to tackle because they came to the top as the sources producers most often turn to for information about vaccines at 80 per cent and 11 per cent, respectively.

The antibiotics, Draxxin and BioMycin, were listed by some producers as vaccines they have used. Other than that, it was encouraging to learn that all respondents have used vaccines at one time or another because uptake of vaccines currently available suggests their acceptance of and willingness to spend money on vaccines. Most commonly they

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animal health

vaccinate against breeding, respiratory, clostridial, and scours diseases.

Disease prevention, at 52 per cent, is by far the main reason why producers use vaccines. Disease control and because their veterinarians recommend that they use the vaccine are neck in neck around 17 per cent. Only 5.7 per cent vaccinate to try to eliminate disease and 4.8 per cent vaccinate on the recommendation of buyers.

Almost 79 per cent of respondents participate in quality-assurance programs, such as Verified Beef Production and Canadian Quality Milk. Sixty per cent of those who participate in these programs have more than 250 cows. Of those, 37 per cent indicated that they would be interested in vaccines for JD and bTB. Combining producers’ strong interest in quality assurance with the reasons why they use vaccines, Ugochukwu and Phillips suggest that beef and dairy farmers are most interested in disease prevention and control as a liability management response. They say this looks like a good signal for the uptake of the subunit vaccines as a complementary approach to disease prevention and control.

Willingness to pay seems to depend on interest in quality-assurance programs and herd size. Approximately 65 per cent of those willing to pay around the $15.50 mark per cow per year for a JD vaccine have herds averaging 750 dairy cows.

Eighty-five per cent of those who said they’d pay more than $20 per cow have more than 1,000 dairy cattle.

Overall, 12 per cent of respondents were not willing to spend more than $5 per cow per year for a JD vaccine and 27 per cent were not willing to spend more than that for a bTB vaccine. At the opposite end of the spectrum, 10 per cent would pay more than $20 per cow per year for a JD vaccine and seven per cent would pay more than $20 for a bTB vaccine.

Most are in the middle at about 49 per cent and 44 per cent, respectively, and are willing to pay an average of $7.50 per animal per year for JD and bTB vaccines. Another 29 per cent and 23 per cent, respectively, are willing to pay an average of $15 per cow per year for JD and bTB vaccines.

As the current Alberta-Saskatchewan bTB investigation and Manitoba PED situation prove, disease outbreaks can be cumbersome and very costly to manage.

Ugochukwu and Phillips maintain that costs of dealing with outbreaks could be

reduced with the use of effective and safe vaccines. The subunit JD and bTB vaccines, with companion diagnostic tests to distinguish between naturally infected and vaccinated animals, could offer an effective and profitable disease prevention, control and management option and reduce international trade distortions arising from disease outbreaks.

Economic theory has it that any situation that creates a negative externality

potentially requires public-sector investment to develop effective control mechanisms. Producers may not be able to make the investment needed to provide effective control, especially when market signals aren’t there. Public-sector incentives for producers to adopt any new subunit vaccine might go a long way to encourage its use, thereby reducing longterm cost burdens and improving health and safety. c

A Canadian Solution

to Parasite Control

Solvet has developed Solmectin for Cattle to effectively meet the needs of Canadian Beef Producers. It’s available in 3 sizes to provide you with the combination of convenience and value you require: A 5 L size for small ranches. An industryfirst 10 L size that allows for excellent value and greater flexibility when treating midsized operations, and an economical 20 L container for high volume pour-on users.

I founded Solvet because I saw too many great ideas from producers, veterinarians and researchers that never had a path to market. We were proud to bring you Meloxicam Oral Suspension, the first product available to address pain at castration in cattle and we look forward to bringing you innovative products that come from the grassroots by listening to the future needs of Canadian Agriculture.

– Dr. Merle Olson

All Research, Development and Production are done in Canada for the Canadian Cattle Industry.

For more information on pain prevention, contact your veterinarian or visit solvet.ca Solvet is a subsidiary of Alberta Veterinary Laboratories Ltd.

www.canadiancattlemen.ca

C a t t l e m e n · S E P TEM B E R 2 0 1 7 Client: AVL Solvet 6311-Fall_Solmectin_Ad_CC-FINAL.indd 1 Project: Fall Solmectin Ad Date: Sept 2017 Designer: JM

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Agency: ON Communication2017-08-17 Inc 4:07 PM Agency Contact: Raellen Seaman Telephone: 519-434-1365 xt 228 Email: raellen@oncommunication.ca

 animal h ea lt h

By Roy Lewis DVM

Pre-plan for emergency slaughter

A

ll producers run into the need for emergency slaughter from time to time to preserve the value of an animal and prevent the waste of good meat protein.

By its very nature these are emergency situations so it is important to pre-plan the chain of events that would happen in cases when it becomes necessary.

My examples focus on cattle and the provincial rules for ante-mortem inspection in Alberta. Bear in mind the regulations could vary slightly depending on the province.

When a bull breaks a leg or an animal becomes a downer due to a back injury or severely lame from a stifle injury so that it can’t be transported, emergency slaughter is often a viable solution. Another example would be when you are dealing with an unmanageable mature animal.

In most cases these animals still have value, plus there is often a need to end the animal’s suffering as quickly as possible.

They are called emergencies for a reason.

A downer may be in pain and the muscle damage and trimming losses increase the longer an animal is down.

Once the decision is made to butcher these animals, and it is evident there are no drug residues, then the path is fairly clear on what to do.

Producers can always butcher for their own use and there are many on-farm mobile butchers that can facilitate this process. In these cases if the producer or the mobile butcher notice any type of pathology they are concerned about, a veterinarian can check the tissue and if in any doubt send it away to determine if it is diseased or the meat is edible.

Over the years many a farm butcher, mobile butcher, or hunter for that matter have brought specimens in to be checked.

Better safe than sorry, especially when the meat in this carcass is for your family’s consumption. You will need to find out if this is a service your local veterinarian wants to provide. I suggest bringing in the fresh specimen so it can be prepared for further processing. Putting it on ice in a sealed container for transport to the clinic works well. We must always keep biosecurity in mind.

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Beyond the local butcher there is a way to get the meat inspected so it can be sold.

This involves co-operation between the owner or auction market operator or custom feedlot plus the veterinarian and the provincially accredited processing facility.

A veterinarian in Alberta has to undergo a course to become an appointed inspector by Alberta Agriculture. That way one is familiar with everything from specified risk materials to aging of cattle by teeth to which lymph nodes are checked on the inspection floor. Veterinarians are then qualified to do an ante-mortem inspection that is a health check before death. The animal is then humanely put down (gun shot or captive bolt) by the inspector and bled out. The carcass can then be loaded and taken to a provincial plant where it can be further inspected and processed.

Some provincial plants only have inspectors on site certain days so this needs to be checked out and verified. You need to ensure there is time allotted. If this is all done correctly and the necessary paperwork filled out, which isn’t onerous, the meat can be sold.

After bleeding, depending on ambient temperature, they like the carcass delivered preferably within one to two hours. This may vary according to the province. There may be some leniency for unexpected delays but the idea is to get the carcass in as quickly as possible for gutting, skinning and chilling in the interest of better meat quality and minimal contamination.

I know this seems like a lot of effort but with good communication between the plant and the veterinary inspector most times high-quality beef is available for sale.

In my eyes the majority of these cases occur at auction markets, during processing or loading cattle and when bulls are turned out to pasture and fighting occurs.

If these slaughter services are available they can be used. I know of instances where once the meat was inspected it was offered to employees or even donated to a food bank, or the plant may buy it. The choice will be yours.

A large animal veterinary clinic in Ontario has taken this service to the ultimate degree. They have veterinarians certi-

C a t t l e m e n · S E P TEM B E R 2 0 1 7

fied to do the ante-mortem inspection and provide transportation in special trucks right to the plant and do the inspection at the plant if no inspectors are on that day.

This is an excellent service and they should be commended for their efforts. The service is widely used because it is available and the economic decision of the worthiness of the carcass is made on site depending on the necessity of the situation. The veterinarian does the inspection to the level he/she has to in order to ensure the beef animal is edible. This includes body temperature, even various neurologic exams; whatever is deemed necessary for that individual case and then it is further followed up at the plant With transport regulations becoming harsher we can definitely make it easier on these non-resolvable lame cattle by using the emergency slaughter route.

In many situations an appointment can be booked and the plant informed so this is not always an absolute emergency. In other cases, if necessary, painkillers with short withdrawal times can be prescribed to minimize the delay.

If you want this service seek out a veterinarian who is already certified or encourage the ones you use to become certified.

The local plant may get more business and you will have salvaged some good quality beef, so it’s a win-win-win situation for all concerned.

We need to evaluate every emergency slaughter case to prevent other similar ones but accidents or fluky events cannot be predicted.

I hope this article gets some veterinarians thinking about providing this service and encourages producers to be proactive and create a plan in the event an emergency slaughter situation comes along.

I realize some producers are far from provincial-type plants but they still have the option of keeping the meat for themselves and salvaging some value out of an unfortunate event. c Dr. Roy Lewis is an Alberta-based veterinarian specializing in large-animal practice. He is also a part-time technical services vet for Merck Animal Health.

www.canadiancattlemen.ca

CANADIAN ANGUS

Feeder Green Tag Program Sales BRITISH COLUMBIA

B.C. Livestock Producers Co-Op (Kamloops) 250-319-3992 | October 24, 31 Okanagon Falls Stockyards 250-497-5416 | October 30 Vanderhoof Auction Market Ltd. 250-567-4333 | October 27 Williams Lake Stockyards 250-398-7174 | October 25, 26 VJV Dawson Creek Auction 250-719-5561 | September 22; October 20

ALBERTA

Balog Auction Services Inc. 403-382-5727 | October 13, 20, 24, 27, 31; November 7 Bow Slope Shipping Association 403-793-3060 | Contact for sales dates Burnt Lake Livestock Mart Ltd. (Red Deer) 403-358-9442 | September 28; October 19; November 2 Calgary Stockyards Ltd. (Strathmore) 403-560-4343 | October 14; November 4; December 2 Dryland Cattle Trading Corp. (Veteran) 780-753-1515 | November 6 Foothills Auctioneers Stavely 403-625-7171 | October 16, 23; November 6, 13 Innisfail Auction Mart 403-391-0580 | October 2, 16; November 6, 20 Medicine Hat Feeding Company 403-528-0797 | October 16, 18, 20, 23, 25, 27, 30; November 3, 6, 10 North Central Livestock Exchange Inc. (Clyde) 780-349-1491 | September 26; October 24; November 28 (Vermilion) 780-853-0626 | October 21; November 4 Olds Auction Mart 403-556-4458 | October 13, 27 Perlich Bros. Auction Market Ltd. 403-382-7800 | October 7, 14, 18, 21, 28; November 4, 6, 11 Provost Livestock Exchange 306-753-7788 | October 23; November 6 Southern Alberta Livestock Exchange (Fort Macleod) 403-627-6534 September 15 (video sale); October 17, 19, 21 Stettler Auction Mart (1990) Ltd. 403-740-9609 | Silver - September 30; Angus, October 10; Angus, October 20 TEAM Electronic Sale (Jason Danard) 403-519-8916 | October 13; November 3; December 1 Thorsby Stockyards Inc. 780-789-3915 | October 23; November 20 Viking Auction Mart 780-336-6333 | October 3; November 7; December 5

Market your 2017 Angus tagged calves at these Angus feature sales at participating auction markets. These auction markets are recognized supporters and sellers of cattle identified as Angus through the Canadian Angus green tag.

VJV Auctions Beaverlodge 780-354-2423 | October 19 Ponoka 403-783-5561 | November 22 Rimbey November 21 Triple J VJV Westlock 780-349-3153 October 26; November 23 DLMS DLMS.ca.

Contact Jeannie Chase: 780-554-4939 or Mark Shologan: 780-699 5082

SASKATCHEWAN

Alameda Auction Market 306-489-2221 | Contact for sale dates Assiniboia Livestock Auction 306-642-5358 | October 14, 17, 24, 28; November 4, 7, 11, 14, 18, 25 Cowtown Livestock Exchange Inc. (Maple Creek) 306-662-2648 October 17, 19, 21, 24, 26, 31 Heartland Livestock Services Lloydminster 780-808-6548 | November 6, 16 Moose Jaw 306-631-0410 | October 17 (Red and Blacks), 31; November 14 Prince Albert 306-960-4732 October 17; November 21 Swift Current 306-741-570 October 14, 21; November 4, 11, 18, 25 Yorkton 306-621-3824 | October 4 Mankota Stockmen’s Weigh Co. 306-478-2433 | October 20 (Canadian Angus Rancher Endorsed Sale), 27; November 3, 10 Meadow Lake Stockyards Ltd. 306-240-5340 | Contact for sale dates Saskatoon Livestock Sales Ltd. 306-222-9526 | November 10 Shaunavon Livestock Sales (88) Ltd. 306-297-2371 | Contact for sale dates Spiritwood Stockyards 306-883-7375 | October 4, 18; November 1, 15 Weyburn Livestock Exchange 306-842-4574 | October 23; November 6, 20 Whitewood Livestock Sales 306-735-7813 | October 10, 13, 24; November 7, 10, 21, 24, 27

Ste. Rose Auction Mart Ltd. 204-447-7054 | November 9 Winnipeg Livestock Sales 204-782-6222 | October 6, 27; November 24

ONTARIO

Brussels Livestock 519-887-6461 | November 10 Ontario Stockyards Inc. (Cookstown) 705-435-1423 | October 12 Ottawa Livestock Exchange (Greely) 613-822-1351 | October 26 Kawartha Lakes Cooperative Auction Market Inc. (Woodville) 705-439-4444 | October 11 Keady Livestock Market (Tara) 519-934-1626 | November 2 Ontario Livestock Exchange Ltd. (Waterloo) 519-749-5072 | September 20; October 11; November 15

QUEBEC

Contact the Feeder Calf Sales Agency 450-697-0540

NEW BRUNSWICK

Sussex and Studholm Agricultural Society Auction Barn 506-432-1841 October 11

NOVA SCOTIA

Atlantic Stockyards Ltd.

902-670-5999 | October 14; November 18

MANITOBA

Interlake Cattlemens Co-Op Assn Ltd. (Ashern) 204-768-2669 | October 25 Gladstone Auction Mart Ltd. 204-385-2043 | March 8 Grunthal Livestock Auction 204-434-6519 | November 14 Heartland Livestock Brandon 204-727-1431 | October 17; November 7 Virden 204-748-2809 | October 11; November 1, 15 Killarney Auction Mart Ltd 204-724-2131 | October 23; November 20

Brian Good • 403-391-4037

Senior Director of Business Development BC/AB

BoB Toner • 306-716-5272

Director of Business Development SK/MB

naThan Marin • 306-869-7130

Director of Business Development: New Generation

Bob Toner and Brian Good present Lee Crowley, Heartland Livestock Services, Swift Current the 2016 CAA Auction Market of the Year Award

The Canadian Angus Association will be at Canadian Western Agribition 2017 and Farm Fair 2017 selling tags.

Please stop by our booth, say “hello” and purchase your green Angus tags!

292140 Wagon Wheel Blvd Rocky View County, AB T4A 0E2 cdnangus@cdnangus.ca

www.cdnangus.ca

 researc h o n t h e r eco r d

By Reynold Bergen

Bovine Respiratory Disease from the Farm to the Feedlot

W

eed seeds and invasive species may be present even in well-managed pastures and rangelands, but it is hard for them to germinate, establish and spread in healthy, competitive forage stands.

Stresses like severe drought, overgrazing, heavy traffic or excavation can weaken forage stands and create opportunities for unwanted plants to take root.

Researchers are now studying whether similar principles may apply to animal health and disease processes.

For example, calves that were perfectly healthy on the farm can face a serious risk of bovine respiratory disease (BRD) in the feedlot after experiencing the stresses of weaning, commingling, transportation and ration changes. Dr. Trevor Alexander of Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada’s Lethbridge Research Station and collaborators from the University of Calgary are studying bacterial populations (the microbiota) in the respiratory tract of feedlot cattle.

They published the results of a small study supported by the Beef Research Cluster earlier this year (The nasopharyngeal microbiota of beef cattle before and after transport to a feedlot; BMC Microbiology 17:70).

What they did: Little is known about what the “normal” respiratory microbiota looks like in cattle, let alone how it changes in response to any given stress. Because exposing calves to multiple stresses at the same time may have produced large, complex, difficult to interpret changes in the microbiota, this team focused on the effects of simply moving cattle from the home farm into the feedlot. They used 14 Angus x Hereford heifer calves (640 lbs.) from the Canadian Food Inspection Agency’s herd at the Animal Disease Research Institute in Lethbridge. These calves had never been vaccinated or treated with antibiotics, were weaned and fed an alfalfa/barley silage diet for 41 days before the trial began, and were transported only 20 km to the research feedlot. They were not commingled with any other calves at the feedlot, and were kept on an alfalfa/barley silage diet during the study. This allowed the research team to narrowly focus on the effects of a short-distance haul from their farm of birth to the feedlot.

Swabs were collected from the nasopharynx (very back of the nose) immediately before leaving the farm, as well as two, seven and 14 days after arriving at the feedlot. These swabs were used for gene sequencing (to identify the relative numbers of different bacteria in the nasopharyngeal microbiota) and for culturing BRD pathogens.

What they learned: The nasopharyngeal microbiota changed very rapidly. On day 0, 76 main groups of genetically related bacteria were found in all calves. By day 2 this had increased to 292 groups, and averaged 313 groups by days seven and 14. This suggests that the heifers were picking up new groups of bacteria from the pen environment, feeders and water bowls, as well as sharing bacteria among each other. Not all bacterial groups were

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the same size, and the groups that were largest at the start got smaller as more groups appeared.

BRD pathogens Mannheimia, Pasteurella and Mycoplasma (but not Histophilus) were detected at day 0, day 2, day 7 and day14. Numbers of Pasteurella generally decreased after day(d) 0, but accounted for more than 10 per cent of the microbiota in at least one calf at each of the other time points. Mannheimia numbers peaked on d7, averaging under five per cent of the overall nasopharyngeal microbiota. Mycoplasma was still increasing on d14, when it accounted for nearly 40 per cent of the overall nasopharyngeal microbiota, and for more than 63 per cent in four heifers.

All heifers remained healthy during this study despite the apparently profound disruptions in the nasopharyngeal microbiota, and despite the presence of Mycoplasma, Mannheimia and Pasteurella in the nasopharynx of many heifers. This small study didn’t collect samples of lung fluid, though, so it’s impossible to know whether the lung’s microbiota was disrupted or not, or whether any of these potential pathogens had migrated to the lung.

What it means: There are parallels between pasture health and respiratory health. Healthy noses aren’t free of bacteria, and can even carry disease-causing bacteria (pathogens). As long as the bacterial populations (microbiota) remain stable, potential pathogens remain at a low level in the nose, where they remain harmless. But when stress disrupts the nasal microbiota, pathogens can flourish, potentially spread to the lung, and may cause disease.

Affordable, effective and accessible antibiotics have allowed the beef industry to prevent BRD relatively well in high-risk feedlot calves. But antibiotic resistance, retail pressure and regulatory revisions all point to changes on the horizon. Like pasture managers, we will need to understand and adopt better ways of preventing problems rather than fixing them.

Our beef industry is fortunate to have the world’s pioneering research team in this field located here in Canada. This team now plans to study how vaccination, weaning practices, preconditioning, transportation and commingling affect the overall respiratory microbiota and disease incidence in larger numbers of commercial cattle from the home ranch through the feedlot.

The Beef Research Cluster is funded by the Canadian Beef Cattle Check-Off and Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada with additional contributions from provincial beef industry groups and governments to advance research and technology transfer supporting the Canadian beef industry’s vision to be recognized as a preferred supplier of healthy, high-quality beef, cattle and genetics. c Dr. Reynold Bergen is the science director of the Beef Cattle Research Council.

www.canadiancattlemen.ca

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PastureMap

 straigh t f ro m t h e h i p

By Brenda Schoepp

What is Land For?

I

t started as a potential narrative for agricultural peril with the question: “What is land for?” That got my attention and I was fostering the dismal thought of a counter defence. But the context of the question had deeper meaning. What will land be for?

Throughout history land has been fought for, won and lost as territory or domain. It rarely was kept strictly as a source of food production, (it didn’t matter if the poor were hungry). It has been one man’s or one county’s measure of wealth. The drawing of borders was a compromise often based on port access and elements of controlling transportation, population movement, politics, religion, precious metals and gems, and economic status.

As we face intensification over land issues, the conversation has shifted to what is termed as “sustainable intensification.” This, in my opinion, is entirely possible for the short term, but does not address the future. We can sustain green spaces, recycle, reduce waste, build up rather than out, provide food spaces and use food waste for fuel but that is only part of the cycle. Cities, burned out fields, land areas filled with bombs, deathly chemical residue from other industry, and dried aquifers all have one commonality: they can be intensely sustained but they cannot regenerate. And it is in regeneration, not in sustainability, where our future lies.

While every industry jumps on the sustainability bandwagon, there are a few visionaries of the future who see the world through a different lens. They understand soil must regenerate, not simply sustain. They understand air must regenerate, not sustain. They get that regardless of how we stock our oceans or clean our waters, a sea of plastic residue out there will keep the process sustainable but never regenerative.

Take a field of alfalfa. It sustains when we add fertilizer and that can be intensified. It regenerates when it has complementary species to hold the moisture to feed its amazing root, which can be tap or creeping, depending on the variety. These complementary friends slow the runoff and keep the soil cool. Its beautiful bloom is like a cluster of orchids and is a bit intimidating for honey bees but leaf cutter bees are great assets to the pollination process. Protection from wind that stresses the plant can be found in shelterbelts that are strategic in their location. This plant has an extraordinary life span when it is part of an ecosystem. It has a shorter life span when it is just sustained.

And in genetics, as we continue to eliminate outliers, single trait select, reduce seed varieties and foster codependency on single sources of life, we may intensely sustain agriculture but that is not regeneration.

In many European countries, even deeded farmland is open to the public. Access for the purpose of education

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or relaxation is deemed a public right in some countries while in others there is little or no access to private lands.

The question becomes: which is the greater contributor to the health of a nation? The no trespassing sign that is nailed to the gate or the sign that says all are welcome, please report in for your safety and comfort? I cannot judge either way but am certain that if it were put to a public vote, reasonable access to land for the enjoyment of it, for healing or for the participation in viewing the story of food, would win over the idea that all people must stay out at all times.

So back to the question of what is land for? Urban sprawl has suffocated the highly productive lands as civilizations begin where there is food, water and access to the sea. The idea that fertile land fed our ancestors is only partly true as trade was the dominating factor. As we spread agricultural production into regions farther from urban centres, the soil changes and its lifespan is shorter if sustained. Regeneration is foundational.

What will land be for? The enjoyment of the public, waste disposal, trading pieces in the game of economic or political gain, food production, recreation, weapons, military testing, prisoners, wildlife, resource development, sequestering plants or government hoarding? If these seem unlikely, read the history books and how land and its borders were used to ensure economic power.

Remember the walls that were built and the turmoil that creates to this day. Consider Canada’s arable acreage of under five per cent and ask yourself if that should be sustained or regenerated. And finally, imagine how your farm or ranch would adapt to public access.

I have said that even those who grow food on their balcony are also a part of agriculture. Not once has a farming audience agreed with that statement. Holding an elitist view without regard for the ecosystem in which we farm or ranch, only ensures that food production remains sustainable. By closing the door to the art of land regeneration and all the possibilities when one engages with someone outside of industry, we ensure our certain demise. Sharing our values is as important as protecting them. I would want for folks to grow their own food and to enjoy the process. Think of it this way, if there is ever an interruption in food delivery or transportation systems, those urban persons you love will go hungry.

This is not a narrative for agricultural peril but an invitation to think about the possible within and beyond the borders on our land: an invitation to bury our sustainable practices and revitalize our food production culture with regenerative systems. c Contact Brenda through her website: www.brendaschoepp.com.

All Rights Reserved. Brenda Schoepp 2017

www.canadiancattlemen.ca

BUILDING TRUST IN CANADIAN BEEF

Don’t let a broken needle become a broken promise Your industry is depending on you

I

t’s a line parents and motivational speakers use often. It’s not what happens in life but how you respond that counts.

Not many producers encounter broken needles. But how they and their industry will be measured is in their response.

Melissa Downing wants to make sure that a broken needle doesn’t become a broken promise for the industry. A producer herself, Downing is manager for the Verified Beef Production Plus (VBP+) program in Alberta.

Her take is that the solution is a combination of making sure the basics of injection management are followed, and that communications is taken seriously.

Critical injection basics

Here’s a quick recap of the basic steps to prevent broken needles on the farm or ranch.

Restrain cattle securely. A properly functioning squeeze chute with a neck extender or head restraint allows for effective injections while keeping both handlers and cattle safe.

Use sharp needles and never straighten a bent needle. Inspect needles after use to ensure they are intact.

Use proper needle size and length.

This depends on product viscosity and injection route.

Consider detectable needles. They stay sharp longer, are less prone to bending and breaking, and make broken needle detection easier at processing plants.

of the broken needle in that specific animal.

Simplest is to keep the animal, harvest at a local abattoir and use the meat yourself.”

Watch for buckshot

Improper restraint is one common reason needles break, says Melissa Downing.

Use proper injection technique. Give injectable products in the neck and use under the skin (sub-Q or SC) method when identified on the product label.

Fresh needles. Try to change needles every 10 animals if vaccinating mature animals, or each time for sick animals.

Discard properly. Use sharps containers so cattle, animals or people aren’t at risk.

Communication rules

You have to share knowledge to manage this problem. There isn’t much debate on this issue, says Downing. Communications is the direct responsibility of the owner.

“Identify the animal and record the incident on the permanent record. If an animal is being sold, the next owner must be notified

Packers report cases of buckshot in beef product each year. Likely no fault of the producer but in the consumer’s eyes, beef producers are held accountable for producing a safe product.

Like many, Downing is puzzled at how buckshot damage happens. “As an industry we can encourage wildlife organizations to let their members know that this is an issue,” she says.

“Individual producers can tell hunters not to shoot in the direction of cattle.

Avoid grazing cattle on pastures behind hunting blinds or feeding areas for game birds. And never use shotguns for any purpose around animals.”

Learn through VBP+

The newly minted VBP+ program in Canada offers an ideal training and coaching environment for young or new producers.

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B U I L D I N G T R U S T T H R O U G H S U S TA I N A B L E B E E F P R O D U C T I O N

Cattle Stand Out

 vet aDvi c e

Ticks join new world order in infectious disease

B

y scientific estimate, ticks have been around for 100 million years. They represent the most famous bloodsucking arachnids, (eight-legged organisms).

The world is now in unchartered territory when it comes to infectious diseases. Over the past century, the number of new infectious diseases cropping up each year has nearly quadrupled.

The number of outbreaks per year has more than tripled. In the past 25 years 15 new human diseases have appeared in North America and the disease agents that have existed forever move globally with increased virulence. Climate change is helping the northern extension of vectors and the diseases they carry. Ticks are among the agents responsible for the startling aberrations in disease prevalence we see today.

Ticks come in two varieties: soft ticks (Argasidae) and hard ticks (Ixodidae). Hard ticks get their name from the large and tough shield that they carry on their backs. Soft ticks lack this shield and have a leathery “skin” instead. Another difference between soft and hard ticks is the location of their mouth parts.

Hard ticks have their mouthparts on the front of their body, giving the impression of a head, while soft ticks carry their mouthparts on their underside.

Most ticks go through four life stages: egg, six-legged larva, eight-legged nymph, and adult. After hatching from the eggs, ticks must eat blood at every stage to survive. The lifecycle of blacklegged ticks (causes Lyme disease) generally lasts two years during which they go through the four life stages. Generally, adult female hard ticks breed while on the host animal and then drop to the ground to lay eggs. A female lays several thousand eggs at a time, which will eventually hatch into the larval stage, known as seed ticks. Some species of tick larvae can live up to 540 days without feeding. Once a larva finds a host, it feeds for approximately five days then drops off to molt into a nymph.

Ticks do not fly or jump. Instead, they wait for a host, resting on the tips of grasses and shrubs in a position known as “questing.”

While questing, ticks hold onto leaves and grass by their lower legs. They hold their upper pair of legs outstretched, waiting to climb onto a passing host.

Depending on the tick species and its stage of life, preparing to feed can take from 10 minutes to several days. Many species also secrete a cement-like substance that keeps them firmly attached during the meal. The feeding tube can have barbs, which help keep the tick in place. Ticks also can secrete small amounts of saliva with anaesthetic properties so that the animal or person can’t feel that the tick has attached itself and often feed unnoticed. Pathogens are ingested then transmitted during the next feeding. Once infected, a tick can transmit infection throughout its life and can transmit infectious organisms to succeeding generations in the life cycle.

The longer the tick is attached, the greater the risk of acquiring disease from it.

Ticks become efficient carriers of disease organisms because they readily adapt to climate change; often involve multiple species during a lifecycle, including humans; feed for long

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periods of time; and infectious agents pass from stage to stage in the lifecycle.

The list of diseases ticks transmit include: Lyme disease: Lyme disease is the most prevalent tick-borne disease of humans and animals in Canada and the United States.

Cases are common in Northeast, the upper Midwest, and California. Lyme disease, caused by a bacterial spirochete Borrelia burgdorferi, occurs across Canada in horses, cattle, dogs, and cats.

Anaplasmosis: Cattle and humans (different diseases) — Anaplasmosis in cattle is a growing concern across the Midwestern U.S. Anaplasmosis in cattle is an infectious disease of the red blood cells caused by the rickettsial bacteria Anaplasma marginale. Most commonly transmitted by ticks, A. marginale primarily causes disease in cattle. Other domestic and wild ruminants such as bison, deer, elk, sheep and goats can be infected, but clinical disease is uncommon. Needles and surgical instruments can also transmit the disease.

Babesiosis: Bovine babesiosis (BB) is a tick-borne disease of cattle. Tick fever drastically changed the movement of cattle from the southern U.S. to Canada during the early days of ranching and remains a threat in cattle moving into the U.S. from Mexico.

Ehrlichiosis: Dogs, humans Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever (RMSF): Rocky Mountain spotted fever is a potentially fatal rickettsial disease of dogs and humans caused by R. rickettsii, and R. parkeri. Dogs serve as an important sentinel function for humans.

Hepatozoonosis: Dogs Hemoplasmosis: Dogs, cats Tick-borne encephalitis: Humans Tick paralysis: Dogs, horses, humans — Tick paralysis in animals is caused by a salivary neurotoxin produced by certain species of ticks. Paralysis is usually caused by feeding adult females, but can be induced by large numbers of larval or nymphal ticks.

Tick paralysis occurs worldwide.

Red meat allergy: Meat from any kind of mammal — beef, lamb, pork, goat, and even whale and seal — can cause an allergic reaction. Recently, scientists identified meat allergies initiated by a bite from the Lone Star tick. Both beef and pork are involved. The Lone Star tick is found predominantly in the Southeast from Texas, to Iowa, into New England, but has now appeared in Canada. A meat allergy to the alpha gal secreted by ticks can develop at any time in life. Poultry may also be involved. Symptoms may vary from simple rashes and respiratory signs to severe anaphylaxis.

There’s no answer to the question why the Creator made ticks.

Most people agree that they’re just there. The tick’s place in the great web of life seems to be to transmit disease and in doing so, control populations. c Dr. Ron Clarke prepares this column on behalf of the Western Canadian Association of Bovine Practitioners. Suggestions for future articles can be sent to Canadian Cattlemen (gren@fbcpublishing.com) or WCABP (info@wcabp.com).

www.canadiancattlemen.ca

 prime cuts

By Steve Kay

DROP THAT BRANDING IRON

H

ide branding goes back to the very start of the North American cattle industry. Cattle rustling was common for a long time and branding was the only way an owner could identify his stolen cattle. Even then, cowboys or their owners died in gun battles while defending or trying to retrieve their animals.

All that is in the past but branding persists. As recently as 2011, 45 per cent of all fed steers and heifers in the U.S. had at least one brand on them. While branding is not directly an animal health issue (the theme of this month’s Canadian Cattlemen), it does put some stress on a young animal. More importantly, it reduces the value of a hide for beef processors and producers.

It’s great news then to learn that branding in the U.S. has declined sharply in the past five years. Nearly three quarters (74.5 per cent) of all harvested steers and heifers in 2016 had no brand, says the industry’s latest Beef Quality Assurance (BQA) report. The report also revealed that significant progress has been made regarding brand location on cattle hides, and branding of all types has declined considerably. Canadian cattle producers, however, likely remain well ahead of their U.S. counterparts in replacing branding with other forms of identification and producing a high quality hide for export.

The U.S. Hide, Skin and Leather Association (USHSLA) applauded the report, which it said highlighted continued improvements in cattle hide quality in recent years. Butt brands continued to be the most prominent branding location, according to the report. While the leather industry prefers no branding marks, says USHSLA, butt brands, those located near the tail of the animal, are considered the best location. That’s because the branding scar is easy to remove during the leather tanning process and will not significantly have an impact on the overall value of the tanned hide.

Furthermore, the number of U.S. cattle with multiple brands fell from 9.9 per cent in 2011 to 1.6 per cent in 2016. Likewise, the amount of hides with brands located on the side, shoulder or rib cage area of the animal, decreased from nearly 14 per cent in 1991 to six per cent in 2016. Side brands often pose challenges to leather tanners, as their location reduces the available portion of the hide that can be used to produce leather, says USHSLA. The difference in brand locations affects the overall economic value of an animal, notes USHSLA. No brands on the hide will garner the highest price per head, while on average, butt brands are US$1-2 per piece lower, and side-branded hides can be US$1012 lower. The BQA report captures the lost value of branding practices by the U.S. cattle industry, estimating that producers lost nearly US$1 per head in 2016 as a result of branding practices. But due to increased awareness by cattle producers, the value lost has shrunk from US$2.43 per head since the first BQA report in 1991, says USHSLA. That’s still a loss of about US$26 million on the number of steers and heifers expected to be harvested this year. But it’s well down from the US$63 million lost in 1991.

The BQA reports’ positive findings are a testament to the U.S. cattle industry’s concerted efforts to improve producer value and returns to all sectors of the beef industry, says USHSLA president Stephen Sothmann. U.S. cattle hides are used around the world to produce leather for footwear, automobiles, luxury handbags and home furnishings. The industry exports 95 per cent of all its hides for a total value of over US$2 billion. This shows that hide quality matters. c

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C a t t l e m e n · S E P TEM B E R 2 0 1 7

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 CCA repo rts

By Dan Darling

advocacy and recovery

I

n August, the Canadian Cattlemen’s Association (CCA) held its 2017 semi-annual meeting in conjunction with the Canadian Beef Industry Conference (CBIC) in Calgary. I am pleased with the continued momentum of the CBIC, which attracted a record 700+ registrants and surpassed that at the awards banquet with more than 800 guests. The CCA had guests from the U.S. and Mexican cattle producer associations in attendance and held meetings with them to discuss trade matters of mutual importance to our respective industries, just as the renegotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) commenced in Washington, D.C. CCA’s Dennis Laycraft departed the CCA semi-annual and CBIC mid-schedule to fly to D.C. for the start of the August 16 talks, to represent the Canadian beef industry and support the Government of Canada’s negotiations in the agriculture sector. CCA’s John Masswohl covered the negotiations in D.C. through the weekend. Advocacy is essential to supplement information Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland receives through her advisory council.

The D.C. advocacy follows an earlier meeting with Minister Freeland in Edmonton in which Laycraft, along with CCA past president Dave Solverson, representing the Alberta Beef Producers, discussed priority issues for the beef industry as part of an agricultural sector stakeholders’ roundtable ahead. The CCA seized the opportunity to outline priorities for the beef sector, the importance of continued duty-free access for the beef trade, and the importance of maintaining dispute settlement mechanisms, both within NAFTA and external dispute settlement tools at the World Trade Organisation (WTO).

The CCA also advised the minister of the beef industry’s acute need for a trade agreement with Japan. Not only are we falling behind Australian beef which is enjoying tariff reductions in Japan, but recently Japan increased the tariff to 50 per cent from 38.5 per cent on frozen beef imported from countries that do not have trade agreements with Japan. A similar increase applying to fresh chilled beef could follow in the next quarter. Unfortunately, these tariff increases are within Japan’s WTO rights. They send a strong message that if Canada wishes to avoid these duties we should place a high priority on resurrecting the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), as Japan has indicated it prefers a TPP redo over bilateral agreements.

CCA vice-president David Haywood-Farmer updated the CCA on the ongoing wildfire situation in B.C. The CCA continues to work closely with B.C. Cattlemen’s Association on this evolving situation and I have personally raised the issue of the need for assistance with Agriculture Minister Lawrence MacAulay. At time of writing, the total land lost to fires in B.C. to date this year

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stood at 895,000 ha or 2.21 million acres, making this the largest fire season in recorded history. The vast majority of that land is what B.C. cattle producers depend on for grazing and raising their herds. While precise numbers of cattle or ranchers that have been affected are not known at this time, with the fires still raging, we do know more than 30,000 (probably closer to 40,000) head of cattle and likely over 300 producers have been directly impacted.

In late August, BCCA was preparing to submit an AgriRecovery application for disaster relief support to help the B.C. industry regain its footing, However, AgriRecovery does not cover income losses, and there will be a huge impact in loss of growth as well as ability for affected B.C. producers to market their animals per usual. Without significant support, many of these operations will become untenable and this uncertainty is having a huge emotional and mental toll on affected producers.

As outlined in my last column, as an initial start, the CCA is requesting the federal government provide a tax deferral for B.C. producers who chose to sell cattle, and assistance to deal with infrastructure and livestock losses and transportation of cattle and feed. The CCA will continue to advocate for affected producers through this extraordinarily difficult time.

Also during the CBIC, the Cattlemen’s Young Leaders (CYL) program attracted another group of outstanding young people this year and judging proved difficult at the 2017 selection process. CYL representative Wilco Van Meijl was appointed to the International Beef Alliance (IBA) and will be joining Young Cattlemen’s Council president, Shane Klepak, CCA’s Laycraft and myself in Ancusion, Paraguay, along with global beef industry leaders, at the next IBA meeting.

The David Francis Farm, of Lady Fane, P.E.I., is the 2017 recipient of the CCA’s Environmental Stewardship Award (TESA). The seventh-generation farm is operated by father and son team David and Brett Francis and families. A nominee of the PEI Cattle Producers, on behalf of the Maritime Beef Council, the David Francis Farm is the first farm from the Atlantic region to participate in the TESA program’s 21-year history. I encourage you to read all about their outstanding stewardship and conservation efforts, and that of all nominees, on www.cattle.ca.

The Beef Cattle Research Council named Karen Schwartzkopf-Genswein, PhD, as the recipient of the 2017 Canadian Beef Industry Award for Outstanding Research and Innovation.

The CBIC delivered on its promise to spur industry collaboration while showcasing the best the Canadian beef industry has to offer. The CBIC will move to London, Ont,. in 2018. A big thank you to all those involved in the planning of this year’s event.

Until next time. c

Dan Darling is president of the Canadian Cattlemen’s Association

www.canadiancattlemen.ca

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 TH E IN DUST RY

NewsRoundup Health

Johne’s found in three per cent of cows in Sask. surveillance program

Saskatchewan’s Johne’s Disease Surveillance Program has been very successful in that voluntary participation by cow-calf producers has increased every year to the point where there has been a waiting list the last two years.

On the flip side, it has confirmed many participants’ fears of finding positive animals.

From November 2013 to March 2017, there have been roughly 400 (three per cent) positives among the 12,300 animals tested in 67 herds. Fifty of the 67 herds had at least one positive animal. The highest infection rate in a single herd was 25 per cent.

Dr. Wendy Wilkins, disease surveillance veterinarian with the Ministry of Agriculture, says these numbers don’t represent the overall prevalence of JD in Saskatchewan because most participants applied to the program knowing or suspecting that JD was present in their herds.

Nine producers didn’t know or suspect that JD was present but decided to have their herd tested to be sure. Two were sadly mistaken.

This would be more representative of the true situation in the province and likely Western Canada. The Western Canadian Cow-Calf Surveillance Network found at least one positive cow in 23 per cent of herds examined. Overall, 1.5 per cent of the cows were positive.

Producers have been able to apply to test up to 250 head every second year in the Saskatchewan program.

One producer who participated three times found 18 positives in 2013, four in 2014, and nine in 2016. Another found one in 2013, none in 2014, and three in 2016.

This suggests eliminating JD from a herd is a long-term commitment that takes time to sort out, Wilkins says. The recommended strategy is to test and cull positive individuals and their calves, but to manage the disease as a herd problem.

Funding through Growing Forward 2 is limited to $74,000 per year and applicants

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are accepted on a first-come, first-served basis. The program covers lab fees, and the cost of having a vet out one time to collect blood, and another $500 consulting with a veterinarian on risk assessment and management planning.

The program ends in March 2018; however, the Ministry of Agriculture supports continuing the work and will be submitting a proposal for funding in the new Canadian Agricultural Partnership.

The Saskatchewan Stock Growers Association administers the program and more information on JD, the surveillance program and how to apply is available at www. skstockgrowers.com.

Equipment

New products showcased at AIM

Clear blue July skies welcomed a record 409 exhibitors and 25,787 visitors to the third year of Ag in Motion near Saskatoon.

Livestock Central, sponsored by BMO, forged ahead in its second year running with the Saskatchewan Ministry of Agriculture helping to put on a livestock and forage speaker series all three days, featuring Curt Pate on low-stress handling, and tours of cover crop plots sown earlier at the site, in conjunction with the popular exhibitor demonstrations of cattle handling, fencing and baling equipment.

What follows is a summary of some of the latest offerings from exhibitors flanking the Livestock Central lane.

Huber Ag Equipment at Coronation, Alta., featured the new heavy-duty 160-bushel 3in1 Feeder by Advantage Feeders designed specifically for controlfeeding grain or pellets to all classes of cattle; up to five lbs./day for cows, three pounds for yearlings, and two pounds for calves. Cattle are able to lick grain from the groove between two adjustable plates as long as there is saliva on the tongue, typically five to 10 minutes at a time, encouraging short, frequent visits to the feeder between grazing or eating hay. Rumen pH stays balanced so animals use feed more efficiently, improving gains on less grain and forage. See the trial results at www. huberequipment.com.

www.stettlerauction.ab.ca www.canadiancattlemen.ca

NEWS ROUNDUP

Sundog Solar at Sundre, Alta., featured a new camera alarm system that can be mounted to the frame of its portable water trough fitted with one of the company’s solarpowered pumps for drawing water from wells and surface water sources. The camera sends photos of water in the trough twice a day to your cell phone for peace of mind that the system is operating as it should, especially when it is in a remote location. There are no setup costs or monthly charges (www. sundogsolarwind.com).

Nester Livestock Equipment of Vulcan, Alta., showed the new wide-body Silencer hydraulic squeeze chute known for its quiet operation and control of the head and now capable of handling cattle weighing anywhere from 300 to 3,000 pounds.

The Nesters announced that they have taken on the Canadian distributorship for Pearson Livestock Equipment of Nebraska. This system offers choice in headgate, side gate, end gate and length of chute in a full-on hydraulic model and a manual model with the option of adding the company’s manual hydraulic system that multiplies the operator’s effort by 10 times or more and increases head control without the need for electrical power (www.nesterlivestockequipment.com).

Dairy Tech of Strathmore, Alta., showcased the Silostop lineup that includes an oxygen barrier film for use with the protective anti-UV cover. The barrier is a multi-layer lightweight film claimed to be 100 times more effective than plastic covers at eliminating surface spoilage, comparatively reducing dry-matter loss by as much as 20 per cent in the top metre of silage. The woven material of the reusable anti-UV cover allows wind to pass through without lifting the cover (www. dairytech.ca).

FastFence of Fort St. James, B.C., is the Canadian distributor of the STOCKade power fencing system offering the world’s first and only cordless fencing stapler, the ST400i. It was launched in Canada at 2016 Ag in Motion where it won the innovation and people’s choice awards. This year, FastFence demonstrated the Autoguide Post Master Vibrating Post Installer. This attachment fits directly onto the bucket pins of any excavator/digger, grasps the top of a post and vibrates it into place, or just as easily removes posts (www.fastfence.ca).

AgriMatics of Saskatoon, featured its new Libra TMR in this year’s Innovations Program. The dry-matter percentage of each feed ingredient is entered into the Libra TMR app to create rations. The

youth

hardware mounts onto the mixer and connects into the load cell to measure the exact weight of each ingredient going into the mixer and the amount fed out to each pen. The hardware wirelessly communicates with the app running on a mobile device in the cab. When connected to the internet, as-fed and dry-matter intake ration summaries that open with any spreadsheet software can be exported via email (www.agrimatics.com).

Ellen Crane named Nuffield Canada scholar

A young leader in Canada’s beef industry has been chosen as one of four 2018 Nuffield Canada scholars.

Ellen Crane of Murray Siding, N.S., is currently the general manager of the MariContinued on page 44

“Cattle coming into my feedlot are usually heavier, so I treat ’em with long lasting ZACTRAN on arrival.”

Heavier weight cattle are often at lower risk to BRD so it makes sense to treat them with the fast acting,1 long lasting2 product that won’t break the bank. (And it’s plastic, so you won’t break the bottle either.)

Treat them with ZACTRAN ®.

Ask your veterinarian why ZACTRAN is ideal for cattle in your feedlot.

1. Giguère S, Huang R, Malinski TJ, Dorr PM, Tessman RK & Somerville BA. Disposition of gamithromycin in plasma, pulmonary epithelial lining fl uid, bronchoalveolar cells, and lung tissue in cattle. Am. J. Vet. Res. 72(3): 326-330 (2011).

2. Based on label claims.

ZACTRAN ® is a registered trademark of Merial (a member of the Boehringer Ingelheim group of companies), used under license. ©2017 Merial Canada Inc. (a member of the Boehringer Ingelheim group of companies). All Rights Reserved.

ZACT-13-7560-JAD-E

www.canadiancattlemen.ca

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News Roundup Continued from page 43

time Beef Council, co-ordinator for the Verified Beef Production Plus program in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, and president of the Maritime Hereford Association.

“Time management will be the big thing, but we will be able to use the information for work we are doing here,” says Crane, who was surprised to even get an interview let alone be chosen to receive such an honour.

The scholarship provides $15,000 for international travel and study on her chosen topic.

Crane will be exploring beef-production attributes that are important to consumers, such as antibiotic use, hormone use or grass-fed, and how much consumers are willing to pay for beef that comes with certain production attributes. She is also interested in learning how producers could

C a t t l e m e n · S E P TEM B E R 2 0 1 7

put these related management strategies into practice on their operations to leverage marketing opportunities.

Her quest begins with a March conference in the Netherlands where new Nuffield scholars from around the world spend a week on international agricultural and business topics and fleshing out itineraries for the required six consecutive weeks of travel and another four weeks spaced out as needed before filing a formal report to fulfil her commitment.

Her initial plan is to travel to areas where Canadian beef is sold — Europe, Hong Kong, the U.S. and Mexico — to learn about opportunities and challenges in those markets for the Canadian product.

A significant part of the Maritime Beef Council’s work in the coming years will revolve around implementing the Maritime beef sector development strategy announced in May. It addresses current issues and opportunities with the goal of adding 20,000 cows to the Maritime beef herd over the next 10 years. That’s roughly a 44 per cent increase in the current herd of 45,000, along with added backgrounding and finishing capacity

www.canadiancattlemen.ca

N EWS ROU N DU P

needed to capture the economic benefits of a larger herd.

The Atlantic Beef Products plant in P.E.I. foresees a demand for an additional 10,000 finished cattle in the Maritimes and the Ontario Corn-Fed Beef program, another major buyer of Maritime cattle, expects to need an additional 215,000 finished cattle per year.

Cane says there’s no telling where this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity of a Nuffield scholarship will lead. As a youngster growing up on the family’s first-generation cow-calf operation near Cardigan, P.E.I., and even while finishing her masters in animal science at Dalhousie Agricultural Campus, Crane says she never would have guessed that she would be where she is today.

It was her selection to the Canadian Cattlemen’s Association’s Cattlemen Young Leaders program in 2015 that tilted her career path toward marketing. The CYL co-ordinator at the time, Jolene Noble, suggested a switch away from studying the science of beef production. Crane’s interest in the business side led to her mentorship with John Baker of Baker Marketing Services International, who is the director of brand management and business development for Ontario Corn-Fed Beef, and the former director of global marketing for Canada Beef Inc. With guidance from strong networks of people within the Canadian beef industry and from Nuffield alumni here and abroad, Continued on page 46

STAMPEDE

By Jerry Palen

“Are you nuts? Yelling at Flo when you’re working cows and she’s running the gate. www.canadiancattlemen.ca

Join us for two great conferences in one!

News Roundup Continued from page 45

December 5-7, 2017 Edmonton, AB

Crane is confident that her journey over the next two years will be rewarding professionally and personally.

The Nuffield Canada scholarship program is open to anyone between the ages of 25 and 45 involved in any capacity within the agriculture sector, such as primary production, industry, education, research, or governance. For details, visit www.nuffield.ca.

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Be TRU to yourself By Steve Kenyon

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Healthy food grown in a sustainable manner is not out of reach. We can have both.

Our mission statement here at Greener Pastures Ranching is “Economic and environmental sustainability for generations.”

We can clean the water and clean the air, but we have to be sure we don’t go broke in the process. Similarly, big profits earned by production that damages our land and the environment is not sustainable for generations to come. We need to do both.

Management is the key, which is why I

believe education is one of the most important investments we can put into our farms and ranches.

I was very fortunate to be asked to teach a grazing school this spring in Williams Lake, B.C. where I spent two days with the current first- and second-year students of the Thompson Rivers University (TRU), students of the applied sustainable ranching program and some local producers.

I was impressed with the program and the direction at TRU, as its goals are very similar to our mission statement here at Greener Pastures Ranching.

I really liked some of the ideas they are promoting; such as carbon neutral ranching, respecting biodiversity and financial and environmental sustainability, just to

name a few. This program hits home for me and I strongly believe that more of our academic institutions need to adjust what they are teaching along this line.

It offers a hands-on approach to ranch management with 20 hours a week spent working on an actual ranch. They only attend a classroom on average once a week.

Currently, students going through the TRU applied sustainable ranching program will receive a diploma upon graduation and TRU is working with Olds College right now to allow students to transfer into third year of the Olds applied ag business degree program.

Students aren’t required to live in WilContinued on page 48

News Roundup Continued from page 47

Make Your Decisions Profitable

Limousin Bank on the Carcass Breed

Canadian Limousin assoCiation

#13, 4101 – 19th Street N.E., Calgary, AB T2E 7C4 Phone: (403) 253-7309 Web site: www.limousin.com

liams Lake. They call it a “flexible blended learning model” and students living and working on their home ranches or mentoring ranches only drive to campus once per week. For some modules, they can join remotely via video conference.

Students on mentor ranches in the Cariboo region have their room and board covered by their work experience hours drastically reducing the expense of attending the program.

If you are looking to get into agriculture, this just might be the place for you. I’m excited to see where this program goes. Give Gillian Watt a call to see if TRU might be in your future (250-319-2367) or email at holmwoodfarm@gmail.com. You can find them on the web at www.tru.ca/williamslake.

I see TRU as a positive step in the right direction for young producers looking to get into ranching. We need to address the

problems in agriculture and avoid getting caught up in the quick fixes. I believe that is exactly what TRU has in mind.

Steve Kenyon runs Greener Pastures Ranching Ltd. in Busby, Alta., www. greenerpasturesranching.com, 780-307-6500, email skenyon@greenerpasturesranching.com or find them on Facebook.

policy

U.S. group views Healthy Eating Strategy labels as trade barrier

While all of agriculture is focused on retaining market access to the U.S. and Mexico embedded in the North American Free Trade Agreement, the North American Meat Institute (NAMI) based in Washington, D.C., is just as concerned about proposed changes to Canada’s food labels.

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Answer our survey — and have a go at winning one of our caps We have a goal to be the best beef cattle magazine in the business. But we need your help. If you could just fill in this survey and return it to me, you would be helping us set the future editorial direction for Canadian Cattlemen.

All you have to do is tell me what you like about the magazine, and what you don’t like. There’s also some space for you to tell us what you would like to see in future issues.

ClIp And EnCloSE youR MAIlIng lABEl. Each month, we will draw one name from all the surveys sent in and send that person a Cattlemen cap. It could be you!

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 In agribusiness (bank, elevator, ag supplies, etc.)  Other (please specify)______________________ My approximate age is:  a) Under 35  b) 36 to 44  d) 55 to 64  e) 65 or over

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C a t t l e m e n · S E P TEM B E R 2 0 1 7

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The Markets 1 Market Talk Sales and Events Special features Calving Issue (Jan.) Custom Feedlot Guide (Sep.) Stock Buyers’ Guide (Aug.) Animal Health Special (Sep.) Beef Watch (May & Nov.)

Comment 5 4 3 2 1 Newsmakers Letters Our History Nutrition Vet Advice Research Free Market Reflections What would you like to see? __________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ 1666 dublin Avenue How much time do you and your family spend reading Canadian Cattlemen?  Under 2 hours  Over 2 hours

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In an August 15 letter to United States Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer, NAMI president and CEO Barry Carpenter urges the U.S. to oppose efforts by Canada to implement new, unjustified technical barriers to agricultural trade during the NAFTA negotiations.

Specifically the institute points to proposed mandatory frontof-pack nutrition warnings for saturated fat, sodium and sugar as part of Canada’s Healthy Eating Strategy.

While the general goals of the strategy are positive and mirror actions taken in the U.S., Carpenter says this particular initiative “appears to be an unjustified technical barrier to trade.”

“We are concerned that Canada is determined to follow the path of Chile which imposed a similar scheme last year,” which Carpenter points out was opposed by Canada and the U.S. and several other countries on the basis that it could be a barrier to trade.

“We believe the alarmist, unscientific, mandatory measure being proposed by Canada is no different,” wrote Caprenter.

“We also believe it will have an inordinately negative impact on consumer packaged foods from the U.S., given the significant market share of branded, U.S. products in the Canadian market.”

By taking this action, Carpenter says, Canada is not following existing Codex guidance on nutrition labelling nor is it waiting for the Codex Committee on Food Labelling to provide guidance on front-of-pack nutrition labelling. He says the Codex Committee, hosted by Canada in May 2016, has the goal of maximizing harmonization and reducing barriers to trade in relation to front-of-pack labelling. c

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C a t t l e m e n · S E P TEM B E R 2 0 1 7

49

 NEWS ABOUT YOU

By Mike Millar

PurelyPurebred n Carling Matejka, from Ponoka, Alta., has been selected as the 2017 winner of the $10,000 Keith Gilmore Foundation (KGF) Prize for Beef Cattle Innovation, awarded to students Carling Matejka who are recognized for academic excellence, leadership and commitment to pursue a career to improve, support and promote the beef cattle industry.

Matejka is entering her fourth year of the University of Calgary’s veterinary medicine program. She is an active student and volunteer in her community, her profession and in the cattle industry. Her goal after graduation is to become a veterinarian with a “focus on educating society on where our food comes from, the importance of sustainable agriculture and the need for the prudent use of antimicrobials.” In addition, she would like to raise awareness of the importance of mental/ physical well-being in the veterinary profession and emphasize the value of self care and education to her colleagues. n The Keith Gilmore Foundation (KGF) and the Canadian Junior Hereford Association (CJHA) have announced their scholarship winners for 2017.

The three winners of Coleman Nixdorff the $2,500 Hereford Youth Scholarships are Cole­man Nixdorff, from Airdrie, Alta., Morgan Heidecker, Middle Lake, Sask., and Jodi Butler from Halifax, N.S. The four recipients for the $1,000 Future of the Breed Morgan Heidecker Scholarships are Christin Dixon, Arcola, Sask.; Emma Nicholas, Mile­stone, Sask.; Morgan Millham, Outlook, Sask., and Nicholas Cheremshynski, Vegreville, Alta.

The Hereford Youth Scholarship is awarded Jodi Butler to students dedicated to academic excellence, community involvement and leadership toward careers in the livestock industry who are members of

50

Suggestions are always welcome. My phone number is 306-251-0011 Email: mike.millar@ fbcpublishing.com

n The Canadian Charolais Youth Association conference and show August 2-5 in Barrie, Ont., attracted 56 youth from six provinces and 70 head of cattle. The new board of directors (l to r): Kirstin Sparrow (youth co-ordinator), Saskatoon, Keegan Blehm, Man.; Tyson Black, Ont.; Raelynne Rosso (secretary), Sask.; Shelby Evans (president), Sask.; Bradley Fergus, Ont.; Brett Marshall, Ont. Missing: Wyatt Ching (vice-president), Sask.; Aidan Jamieson (treasurer), Alta. the Canadian Junior Hereford Association (CJHA) or other purebred or commercial organizations. The Future of the Breed Scholarship is a post-secondary entrance scholarship awarded to active members of the Canadian Junior Hereford Association.

This year’s winners are entering agriculture bioscience, biomedical engineering, pre-dentistry and nursing.

Gina Devlin

Sarah Van Scohthorst Jacob Onyschuk

n The Canadian Hereford Association has announced the appointment of communications co-ordinator Gina Devlin; programs co-ordinator Sarah Van Scohthorst and director of business development Jacob Onyschuk. Devlin will work primarily on the advertising, design and production of the Canadian Hereford Digest, Onyschuk serves as the Digest managing editor, as well as the field rep for the Digest and the CHA. Van Scohthorst will co-ordinate the CHA research programs and member service awards.

C a t t l e m e n · S E P TEM B E R 2 0 1 7

n The 38th Annual Canadian Junior Here­ ford Association National Show, Bonanza, Herefords Heading West, was held July 17-21 in Abbotsford, B.C., with 100 juniors showing 115 head of cattle.

The winners are: • Grand Champion Female: BNC Glenless 429 Nellie 71D exhibited by Emma Lees, Sask.

• Grand Champion Bull: GH 5Z Marten’s Rock 344D exhibited by Ryder Nelson, Alta.

• The Grand Champion Major Jay Fox Ambassador Award went to Adam Smith, Ont. • The Bob Gordon Grand Aggregate Award went to Daniel Schuepbach, Alta. n The Canadian Speckle Park Association has hit another milestone in its journey from 1959 when Bill and Eileen Lamont developed the first animals to becoming a distinct breed of purebred cattle in July 2006. This year marks the election of the association’s first president from Ontario, Andrew Metcalfe from Ingersoll.

The remaining members of the board are: vice-president Josh Vogel, Theodore, Sask.; member at large Ken Friesen, Abbotsford, B.C.; and directors: Wade Meakin, Westlock, Alta.; Cory Ducherer, Neilburg, Sask.; Scott Sauter, Fairlight, Sask.; and Rod Remin, Crossfield, Alta.

www.canadiancattlemen.ca

PURELY PUREBRED

The breed’s board now has representation from four provinces.

Erin Kishkan

Cody Miller

Mike Geddes

n Erin Kishkan of Quesnel, B.C., was elected president of the Canadian Limousin Association following the breed’s 48th annual general meeting in Portage la Prairie, Man., in July.

Kishkan operates Pinnacle View Limousin with her family. She is the second woman to become president of the Canadian Limousin Association and is the youngest president in the association’s history.

Joining her on the board are: Eric Boon (vice-president) of Saskatchewan; Bill Zwambag (treasurer), Matthew Heleniak, Mike Geddes and Dan Darling from Ontario; Tim Andrew and Cody Miller from

Alberta and Joe Cooper from Nova Scotia. Darling, Miller and Geddes were elected for varying terms this year. The 49th annual general meeting will be held in Great VilDan Darling lage, N.S. in conjunction with the CJLA Impact Show on the first weekend of August 2018. n The Canadian Angus Association has honoured Don Mackenzie of Mackenzie Red Angus and Dyce Bolduc of Cudlobe Angus for their 50 years of membership in the association.

To say Don Mackenzie is a pioneer for the Angus breed is an understatement. Working along with his four brothers, Ted, Mark, Kenny and Rodney, the family operation Mackenzie Brothers was the first to import Red Angus genetics including one herd sire, one cow-calf pair, and two bred heifers into Canada. In 1979 the Red Angus Association of America presented them with the America Pioneer Breeder Award — the first Canadians to receive the award. They received the Cana-

dian Red Angus Breeder of the Year Award in 1984 and was named one of the Red Angus Association of America’s 50 most influential breeders in 2004. Mackenzie was an honorary president of the Canadian Angus Association in 2004 and 2012 and his family was inducted into the Alberta Angus Hall of Fame in 2007.

Dyce Bolduc began breeding Angus cattle when he was a teenager. He is part of the third generation in the Bolduc family to raise purebred cattle in southern Alberta.

The first purebred Black Angus females were purchased in 1967 from the dispersal of the Apache Angus herd at Nanton, Alta.

Dyce served as president of the Canadian Angus Association in 2005 but today he and his wife Adrianna, along with their children Steven, Kevin and Kaitlynn, play active roles in the operation of the Cudlobe herd, which exceeds 600 mother cows. Their breeding program emphasizes carcass traits so that their customers, and more specifically the commercial cattlemen who frequent their sales, can produce premium beef that brings in higher performance, yield and profits.

Continued on page 52

Visit www.agribition.com for the full schedule of events www.canadiancattlemen.ca

C a t t l e m e n · S E P TEM B E R 2 0 1 7

51

PU R E LY PU R E B R E D

Continued from page 51

n Sixty-nine enthusiastic Manitoba and Saskatchewan junior cattle producers brought 78 head of cattle to the 10th annual Manitoba Youth Beef Round-up August 4-6 in Neepawa, Man. This is not just a cattle show. It’s an all-round event to promote and educate youth to continue in the livestock industry. The activities included a presentation from Liz Carey on cattle handling; the Ag Challenge where teams work together to complete 10 stations related to the cattle industry; public speaking; individual and team judging; team fitting; the stockman’s knowledge competition; a cook-off competition; and finishing off with a parade of champions, and 4-H champions and awards ceremony.

2017 results: • 2017 Round-Up Agribition judging team sponsored by Manitoba Charolais Association: Levi Rimke, Orianna Hyndman, Kaitlyn Davey, Cindy Jack and Adam Harms. Team judging winners: Levi Rimke and Cindy Jack (senior), Cody Carson and Bobbi-Jo Foster (intermediate), Jacyi-Jo

Charolais international delegates. Back row (l to r): Kamil Malat, Czech Republic; Manuel Garza, Mexico; Colin Rex, Australia; Ben Harman, United Kingdom; Roberto Leal Gonzalez, Mexico; Peter Phythian, United Kingdom; Helge By, Canada; Mike Elder, Canada; David Hobbs, United States. Front row (l to r): Nevan McKieran, Ireland; Juan Domingo Sandoval Valladares, Guatemala; Dr. Moises Montaño, Mexico; Cesar S. Cantú, Mexico; Luis Enrique Villaseñor Guitiérrez (president), Mexico; Candace By (secretary), Canada; Clément Perrodin (treasurer), France; and Kevin Maguire, Ireland.

Best and Grace Glover (junior) and, Bree Russell and Aklen Abey (pee wee).

• 2017 Bob Gordon Memorial Overall Stockman’s Knowledge Award in memory of Bob Gordon. Winner: Samantha Rimke.

• 2017 Round-Up Scholarship. $1,000

recipient: Naomi Bestand. $500 recipients: Levi Rimke and Kaitlyn Davey.

• Aggregate winners sponsored by Enns Brothers: Samantha Rimke (senior), Nolan Glover (intermediate), Ty Nykoliation (junior), and Bree Russell (pee wee). c

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 Market Su mma ry

By Debbie McMillin

TheMarkets Fed Cattle Fed cattle prices fell 26 per cent from the spring high by the second week in August with steers averaging $141.79/cwt, down $5/ cwt from last year, with the seasonal increase in North American front-end supplies that spilled into the technical markets. Good beef demand encouraged aggressive slaughter levels and shortened pickup times which helped keep feedlots current, nudging our market up to $142.07/cwt by press time, while U.S. prices fell moving western Canadian fed cattle to a premium basis position. The cashto-cash basis in mid-August was $3.59/cwt. Carcass weights were up seasonally to an average 885 lbs. for steers, which is still 26 lbs. under last year.

The August 1 Alberta and Saskatchewan cattle-on-feed report was up two per cent at 671,294 head but placements were up 33 per cent in July and marketings rose by 21 per cent. Steer slaughter was up four per cent over last year at 900,002 head while heifers slaughter was up 11 per cent at 512,441 head. Exports in July from Western Canada jumped 62 per cent over last year bringing yearto-date totals to 189,117 head, up eight per cent.

Feeder Cattle By mid-August 850 yearlings averaged $184 in Alberta, about the same as last year. While the swap for finished cattle into feeder yearlings isn’t good right now, feedlot profits over the past year and Canada’s small feeder supplies supported prices. The Canadian 850-lb. feeder basis has been strong throughout much of 2017, but jumped to $8.55/cwt in mid-August and $6.32 a week later.

Volumes through the sumwww.canadiancattlemen.ca

mer for lighter weight calves are always slow with varied quality; however, sales have started to increase in size in recent weeks.

Prices on light volumes through the past month have decreased from near $230/cwt to $205 at press time, which is about the same as last year.

Non-Fed Cattle Cow prices dropped $13.50/cwt from mid-June to an average of $98.13/cwt by mid-August. The decline through the summer months was a result of some early marketing due to dry pasture conditions in some areas, the higher Canadian dollar that discouraged exports, and aggressive packer purchases in the fed market, leaving less kill space for cows. The third week of August saw the price stabilize and strengthen over $1/cwt to an average of $99.42/ cwt. Cull cow slaughter numbers through the last few weeks have been lighter; however, for the year domestic cow slaughter is up 15 per cent over last year to a total of 264,520 head. Cow exports to the U.S. for slaughter are down 33 per cent at 80,063 head to the end of July. Bull prices, at mid-August are lower as well with the average butcher bull fetching $115.33/cwt, which is almost $10/cwt under a year ago, and more than $54/cwt less than at the same time in 2015.

Butcher bull numbers slaughtered in Canada are up 45 per cent from a year ago with a total to mid-August of 10,589 head. Bull exports are slightly larger this year totalling 31,395 to the end of July which is up two per cent or 477 head over last year. c Debbie McMillin is a market analyst who ranches at Hanna, Alta.

 DEB ’S OUTLOOK Fed Cattle Seasonally through September and October fed cattle prices and wholesale prices move lower. U.S. front-end supply is expected to increase through these months and technicals suggest a downward shift in prices. Near-term prices will likely be pressured lower and basis levels widen. However, western Canadian feedlots are current in their marketings, carcass weights are seasonally normal and on track with the five-year average, and beef demand has remained steady. This should limit the downside in Canada as we work through some of the heavier cattle. A stronger Canadian dollar would not reflect positively in the fed market.

Feeder Cattle Yearlings should remain steady to higher as larger numbers are pulled off pasture, while the lighter weight feeders will come under pressure as volumes build in the coming weeks depending on risk management opportunities, feed grain supplies and the dollar.

Favourable silage harvest reports in southern Alberta support backgrounders, while feed grain prices are higher than last year so Canada has lost some feeding advantage. Still, the smaller supplies from Canada’s stagnant cow herd and good profit margins will keep buyers reaching to fill pens which could limit the downside. Watch the dollar.

Non-Fed Cattle Beef demand has held throughout the summer; however, aggressive fed cattle marketings and a higher Canadian dollar limited cow prices. Volumes will increase seasonally over the fall and culling rates could be higher than normal in dry areas in the west pressuring cow prices lower.

More markets  C a t t l e m e n · s e p t e m b e r 2 0 1 7 53

M A R K ETS

Break-even Prices on A-Grade Steers

340

210 ALBERTA

190

(500-600 lb.)

250

150

220

130

190 Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec

210

160

120

150

100

130

80 Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec

2017 2016

D1,2 Cows

140

170

Canfax weighted average price on A-Grade steers

Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec

160

ONTARIO

190

110

Steer Calves

310 280

170

110

Market Prices

Break-even price for steers on date sold 2017-18 2016

60

Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec

Ontario

Alberta

2017 2016

2017 2016

Ontario prices based on a 50/50 east/west mix

Market Summary (to August 5, 2017)

August 2017 prices* Alberta Yearling steers (850 lb.) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . $185.68/cwt Barley . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.42/bu.

Barley silage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55.25/ton Cost of gain (feed) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68.02/cwt Cost of gain (all costs) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99.42/cwt Fed steers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143.09/cwt Break-even (January 2018) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151.79/cwt Ontario Yearling steers (850 lb.) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . $173.79/cwt Grain corn . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.64/bu.

Corn silage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39.12/ton Cost of gain (feed) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73.82/cwt Cost of gain (all costs) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107.80/cwt Fed steers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147.00/cwt Break-even (February 2018) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147.39/cwt *Mid-month to mid-month prices Breakevens East: end wt 1,450, 183 days West end wt 1,325 lb., 125 days

2017

2016

Total Canadian federally inspected slaughter. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1,637,636. . . . . . . . . 1,506,074 Average steer carcass weight . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 879 lb.. . . . . . . . . . . . . 914 lb.

Total U.S. slaughter. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19,286,000. . . . . . . . . 18,187,000

Trade Summary Exports 2017 2016 Fed cattle to U.S. (to July 29) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 183,151.. . . . . . . . . . . .171,819 Feeder cattle and calves to U.S. (to July 29). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84,910.. . . . . . . . . . . 143,879 Dressed beef to U.S. (to June). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 283.60 mil.lbs.. . . . . 281.53 mil.lbs Total dressed beef (to June). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 392.03 mil.lbs.. . . . 368.32 mil.lbs IMPORTS 2017 2016 Slaughter cattle from U.S. (to June) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 0. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 0 *Dressed beef from U.S. (to June) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 124.51 mil.lbs. . . . . . 123.37 mil.lbs *Dressed beef from Australia (to June) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21.27 mil.lbs. . . . . . . .42.17 mil.lbs *Dressed beef from New Zealand (to June) . . . . . . . . . . . . 21.87 mil.lbs. . . . . . . 23.99 mil.lbs *Dressed beef from Uruguay (to June) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18.00 mil.lbs. . . . . . . 22.42 mil.lbs Canadian Grades (to August 19, 2017) % of A grades +59% 54-58% Prime 0.1 0.4 AAA 15.7 21.3 AA 21.6 10.8 A 1.7 0.3 Total 32.8 39.1

EAST WEST

Total graded 378,174 1,344,376

Yield – 53% Total 1.1 1.6 20.5 57.5 4.5 36.9 0.1 2.1 26.2 Total A grade 98.1%

Total ungraded 16,733 10,314

% carcass basis 82.3% 86.2% Only federally inspected plants

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C at t l e m e n · s e p t e m b e r

2017

www.canadiancattlemen.ca

 market ta l k

By Jerry Klassen

Feeder Cattle Market Outlook

I

’ve received many calls with regard to the outlook for the feeder cattle market for the fall and winter period.

Many cattle producers are asking if they should be backgrounding their calves over the winter while others are looking to sell yearlings over the next month. There are quite a few factors that will influence the feeder market moving forward so I thought this would be an opportune time to discuss the market outlook.

The USDA released their semi-annual cattle inventory report on July 21 and the 2017 calf crop was estimated at 36.5 million head, up 3.5 per cent from the 2016 calf crop of 35.0 million head. The last time the U.S. calf crop was this large was back in 2007 when it reached 36.8 million head. We haven’t seen a sharp increase in the cow slaughter so the U.S. cattle herd continues to expand at a rapid pace. The 2017 Canadian calf crop is expected to come in at 4.4 million head, up about 50,000 head from 2016. Given the sharp year-over-year increase in the U.S. calf crop, I’m expecting Canadian feeder cattle exports to the U.S. will drop to a trickle during the fall and winter. Strength in the Canadian dollar will also temper any opportunities to sell feeder cattle south of the border.

The barley and feed grain outlook has changed from the previous issue. Instead of being “bullish” on the market, I’ve changed my perspective to a rather “price neutral” outlook. While barley supplies are expected to be historically tight during the 2017-18 crop year, U.S. corn production will be larger than earlier anticipated. This will cause U.S. corn and dried distillers grains to trade into southern Alberta. Barley prices in southern Alberta will trade at a premium to imported U.S. corn values. However, with corn prices under pressure during harvest, barley prices will trade in a relatively sideways pattern. After the harvest period, barley prices will likely experience a moderate rally of $15/mt to $20/mt but nothing too earth-shattering that will break the back of the feedlot. Many western Canadian feedlots will switch over to U.S. corn.

The final factor to consider for feeder cattle is the current margin structure and the margin structure in the deferred months, which is dependent on the price of fed cattle. Western Canadian feedlots have gone through an unprecedented profitable period since March and cattle moving out of feedyards in mid-August are still bringing back around $100/head. The equity buildup over the past eight months will be supportive for yearlings in September and October. I think we’ll see some strong prices for yearlings this fall. It would not surprise me if mediumframe steers averaging 850 pounds traded around $2.10/ pound this fall. We saw very similar feedlot behaviour back in 2015 after feedlots had a very profitable first half of the year. The fall period’s strong yearling market only started to really come under pressure in December once feedlots experienced about four to six months of negative margins.

www.canadiancattlemen.ca

u.s. quarterly beef production (million pounds)

Quarter

2013

2014

2015

2016

Estimated 2017

Estimated 2108

1

6,172

5,868

5,664

5,935

6,300

6,325

2

6,517

6,183

5,857

6,187

6,404

7,005

3

6,608

6,179

6,068

6,468

6,830

7,000

4

6,420

6,021

6,109

6,623

7,165

7,030

TOTAL

25,717

24,251

23,698

25,213

26,699

27,360

Above is the U.S. quarterly beef supply projections. If 850-pound yearlings reach up to a range of $2.05/pound to $2.10/pound, the break-even price for the fed cattle in February and March is around $1.60. Interesting to note that during February 2016, the average fed cattle price in Alberta was $1.60. Notice that 2018 first-quarter beef production is expected to come in at very similar levels to 2017. The only difference is that second-quarter beef production will be sharply above 2017. Prices adjust for a relatively tight supply situation in February and early March of 2018 and then start to grind lower given the burdensome supplies in the second and third quarters.

In conclusion, cow-calf producers with yearlings will want to sell in September. Feedlot margins will be quite narrow in November and December which may put the feeder market on the defensive. Producers with calves have two options. The first being to sell in fall because I believe the calf market will trade relatively sideways.

Second, these producers may want to background their calves and sell in February 2018. In any case, cow-calf producers do not want to be holding calves or yearlings after February 2018. Make sure you’ve liquidated all your supplies by then because once the market anticipates the burdensome supply in the second quarter, both fed and feeder cattle prices will tumble. I wouldn’t be surprised if the USDA raised third- and fourth-quarter beef production estimates on subsequent reports. A larger calf crop will cause larger feedlot placements, increased feedlot marketings and larger beef production. If corn prices remain flat, carcass weights will increase. The market will function to encourage contraction in the third and fourth quarters of 2018 through lower prices for fed and feeder cattle. c Jerry Klassen manages the Canadian office of Swiss-based grain trader GAP SA Grains and Produits Ltd., and is president and founder of Resilient Capital specializing in proprietary commodity futures trading and market analysis.

Klassen consults with feedlots on risk management and writes a weekly cattle market commentary. He can be reached at 204-504-8339.

C a t t l e m e n · S E P TEM B E R 2 0 1 7

55

 GOINGS ON

Sales&Events Events September

12-14 Canada’s Outdoor Farm Show, Woodstock, Ont. 16-17 Feedlot School, Nappan, N.S. 18 Tackling Transparency — The Truth about Trust, Westin Hotel, Calgary, Alta.

18-20 The Canadian Centre for Food Integrity Public Trust Summit, Calgary, Alta.

30 Dufferin Town and Country Farm Tour, Mulmer, Ont.

October 12

lberta Livestock Expo, Exhibition Park, A Lethbridge, Alta.

17-18 One Genome, One Health: Our Animals, the Environment and Us, Chateau Lacombe Hotel, Edmonton, Alta.  ADVERTIS ER I ND EX Page Advanced Agri-Direct Inc. 48 Airdrie Trailer Sales 49 Alberta Vet Labs 19, 31 Boehringer Ingelheim 7, 37 Calgary Stockyards Ltd. 42 Canadian Angus Assoc.

33, 48 Canadian Cattle Identification Agency 20. 21 OBC Canadian Charolais Assoc.

Canadian Forage and Grassland Assoc. 52 Canadian Hereford Assoc.

IFC Canadian Limousin Assoc.

48 Canadian Shorthorn Assoc.

47 Canadian Simmental Assoc.

44 45, 48 Canadian Speckle Park Assoc.

Canadian Western Agribition 51 Case-IH 9 Greener Pastures Ranching Ltd. 44 GreenTec 14 Hi-Hog Farm & Ranch 49 John Schooten & Sons Custom Feedyard Ltd. 42 Klassen Agriventure Ltd. 42 Merck Animal Health A1-A8 Merial Canada Inc. 11, 43 Monsanto Canada Inc. 12 a-d, 25, IBC 17 Nester Livestock Northlands Farmfair International 35 Ridley Block Ops/Crystalyx 24 Stettler Auction Mart 42 Supreme International Ltd. 27 Tru-Test Inc. 46 49 WeCover Structures Western Canada Grazing Conference 46 Vetoquinol 5, 23 Zinpro 15

56

19

ff-Site Waterers and Watersheds O Workshop, Standard Community Hall, Standard, Alta.

25-28 Manitoba Ag Ex, Brandon, Man. 26-27 Canadian National Charolais Show and Sale, Keystone Centre, Brandon, Man.

November

1-2 N ational Environmental Farm Plan Summit, The Westin, Ottawa, Ont. 1-4 JTL Industries Stockade Roundup, Exhibition Grounds, Lloydminster, Alta.

3-17 The Royal Agricultural Winter Fair, Toronto, Ont. 8-9 BeefTech, Farmfair International, Edmonton, Alta.

8-12 Farm Fair International, Edmonton, Alta.

14-16 Canadian Forage and Grassland Association Conference, Delta Guelph Hotel and Conference Centre, Guelph, Ont. 18 Maritime Bull Test Station AGM and handling workshop, Nappan, N.S. 20-25 Canadian Western Agribition, Regina, Sask.

20-25 Simmental Federation of America’s Conference, Regina, Sask.

21-23 AgEx, Agricultural Excellence Conference, Ottawa, Ont. 22-23 People’s Choice Gelbvieh Bull Futurity, Agribition, Regina, Sask.

December 5-7

estern Canada Conference on Soil W Health and Grazing, Radisson Hotel Edmonton South, Edmonton, Alta.

February 2018

4-18 Foothills Forage and Grazing Association, Spain and Portugal Ag Tour

Sales October 16

J ustamere “Sale of the Year” 18th Annual Female Sale, Lloydminster, Alta.

November 18

23 23

enton Hereford Ranch Fall Production F Sale, Irma, Alta.

Gelbvieh Sweetheart Classic Sale, Agribition, Regina, Sask.

Western Canadian Gelbvieh Sale, Agribition, Regina, Sask.

December 8

cMillen Ranching Ltd. Herdbuilder 17, M at the ranch, Carievale, Sask.

January 2018 31

oose Creek Red Angus 2-year-old Bull M Sale, at the ranch, Kisbey, Sask. c

 Event listings are a free service to industry.

STAMPEDE

C a t t l e m e n · S E P TEM B E R 2 0 1 7

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