Paul Jungnitsch, a student from the University of Saskatchewan, in 2008 figured out a stunning back-of-the-envelope calculation on the potential benefits of wintering cattle on pasture in his master’s thesis. Using a 130-day wintering period, and figuring that there were over five million beef cattle in Canada based on 2007 StatsCan numbers, if all those
How Do You Spell Out Bale Grazing Benefits? N, P, K, S
Pick A Vet’s Brain On The Government’s Tab
“You can ask as many questions as you want regarding the animal’s and flock health, what you want to do, what you want to treat, what things you want to see – all those things that normally cost a lot.” – MAMOON RASHID Ever look around your farm and wish you could walk a vet
The Man Behind The Lines
“They are very, very easy horses to work with, I find. They’ve got a look and a style to them that just oozes grace, in my opinion.” – CHRIS ARTHUR Visitors at the Royal Manitoba Winter Fair every year come to get an eyeful or two of the best horseflesh from near and far. At
Cattle Cycle Has Bottomed Out, Says Wright
“Miraculously, in the last year, producers have found every record they had since March of 1999, and are age verifying cows at an alarming rate.” – RICK WRIGHT Cow-calf producers take heart, better times may be on the way. A mass sell-off of cattle around the world driven by years of low prices has finally
Homegrown “Fiction” Charms Crowd
You’ve heard about local food. How about local laughs? For three years now, Anna Glover and Ellen Martens have been harvesting small town anecdotes and yarns from local people, and creatively processing them into a comedy routine called the “Ellen and Anna Show.” At the recent Farm Focus 2010 in Boissevain, the pair sat in
Shape Foods Back With Skeleton Crew
“We’re just in the process of getting some product put out in the marketplace.” – Jim Downey Brandon’s Shape Foods’ cash flow arteries may have clogged in the fall of 2008, but the company is now back on the road to health, according to its CEO. The $30-million flax-crushing plant built in 2006 on the
Roaming Pets Attack Sheep
“If there’s a dog that’s wild or is endangering a herd, clearly the farmer is in a position where he could take a .22 out and deal with the dog. But the legalities of pulling a gun and firing it don’t go away just because it’s on private land.” – LINE KARPISH The next time
Trees Add Value To Rural Properties
How much is a good shelterbelt worth? A lot, if you consider how much it would cost to have one put in. Blair English, an agroforestry specialist at AAFC Brandon, was once told by a rural homeowner how much a contractor had quoted her on the cost of putting in a row of six-to eight-foot
Moo-Re Fibre Please, Say Cows
“Our concern is that in dairy rations, we have been feeding things that are too rich.” – DAN UNDERSANDER Everyone talks about the benefits of sowing alfalfa to boost pasture yields. But what about the upside to putting grass in a cow’s rumen? According to Dan Undersander, a forage agronomist from the University of Wisconsin,
Ewe Numbers Down
“The first thing they say is, ‘Well, if they raise the price, I’ll produce more lambs.’ But prices have been pretty good.” – JENNIFER MACTAVI SH The latest StatsCan numbers show that the Canadian ewe flock dipped one per cent over last year, down from 522,100 in 2009. That number represents a continuing 18 per
Cyber-Savvy Farmer
