4 minute read
From the Field
Wow! The spring of 2012 will be remembered for a couple of things. Warmer than normal temperatures and hotter than ever bull sales. The spring sale run has been great in all parts of Canada. From the Maritimes where the Nappan test station sale was as good as ever to Quebec where the sales were stronger than last year, to Ontario where the sales, including some new ones, found great success, to right across the west. Alberta sales seemed to be the strongest of anywhere, where switching to Charolais bulls is in full swing.
Many new sales in the prairies provided solid averages with most selling more bulls off the yards this year than ever before. A sale is not a silver bullet to getting rich selling bulls, but if you work hard, it will produce good results and a higher top end than can usually be obtained by private treaty. This of course is balanced against higher costs of doing business, so it needs to be looked at objectively. If the sale can be held on the farm, it will cut down on the work and expense of going to town, so this needs to be looked at as well.
In this issue you will see the sale reports and at the back the Sale Summary which shows the sale statistics of all the bull sales for the past 31 years. The sale reports will show you which bloodlines and programs were the most sought after and some appreciation ads from many conscientious breeders profile some of the high selling bulls in Canada this spring. The top end of the sales were also stronger with more $10,000 plus bulls selling in the sales.
So what trends did I see this spring in the sales? Interestingly enough it varied somewhat from sale to sale and region to region. Many breeders have developed their program and buyers that are looking for that have followed. In some sales the buyers have been very birth weight conscious. I found this with larger operations who maybe haven’t been using Charolais bulls for a while and are more concerned about calving ease than anything. In other sales the buyers were more concerned about meat and performance and I saw this from maybe smaller number herds who are looking to maximize their return per cow and don’t mind helping the odd calf if it means another 100 lb. at weaning. As I have said before, you need to define your program and produce what your customers are asking and paying the most money for.
Another trend I saw this spring was more people talking about and trying Charolais bulls on black cows. I see this getting bigger and bigger as more try it and see that it works. We need to keep talking about it and giving examples of who is doing it and how well it is working.
I also think the higher cull bull prices put more demand on the bull sales of all breeds. I was visiting with one commercial producer in Saskatchewan in April who had sold a six year old bull that he had been feeding some grain and sileage to, so he was in good shape. The bull weighed 2,865 lb. shrunk and sold for 1.0350 for over $2,900 take home. This is what kept the consumption of numbers up in many sales.
This spring there were more purebred breeders searching for better bulls and willing to pay more for them. I also saw that more breeders were researching the pedigrees of the bulls they were interested in. With more breeders using the internet more frequently this becomes easier. In some cases when looking at the dam of a bull they found that she had not had a calf registered every year so assumed she wasn’t a consistent producer. If you haven’t been registering all your calves and sending in the performance data, I would recommend that you start. This information trend will continue and become more important to many and not registering and transferring bulls will cost you money down the road.
There were also more breeders doing and requesting genomic testing. Some were doing igenity testing especially for identifying the Homozygous Polled bulls and more were doing the Leptin test done by Quantum. I also see these becoming more sought after and requested in the future and if these breeders are willing to pay more for those that test how they want them, I see it as being financially feasible. I also wonder now with some profit back in the business, if more ultrasounding needs to be done in conjunction with the genomic testing to see if this can become more accurate in the future.
Another subject that has been raised lately is the future of the PFRA pasture system after cutbacks were announced in the last federal budget. The current community pasture system includes 61 sites in Saskatchewan, 24 in Manitoba and two in Alberta. The community pastures were the PFRA’s biggest and longest-running soil conservation program on the prairies, set up in the 1930s to reclaim badly eroded soils. They now cover over 2.2 million acres of rangeland, used each summer by about 3,100 producers, who pay fees to graze about 220,000 head of livestock. The government agency has informed its staff of its plan for the pastures, in which 10 pastures will be divested in 2013, followed by additional pastures each year until “full divestiture is achieved in 2018. “ Grazing and breeding services on remaining pastures are to be maintained throughout the transition period and pasture patrons “ will receive as much notice as possible, ” the government said. The six-year stretch is expected to allow time for provinces, municipalities, pastures users and “other stakeholders” to help manage the transition.
