02 vs 09 drought

[Ron]

Just driving around thinking about the shitty crops. In 02 there was money in the beef sector but now is there any left to buy straw, greenfeed, and truck it huge distances? I remember a lot of baled canola straw and silage, will it come to that?
The alberta cereals are poor, late and very short. I don't know If they can swath in some areas? Most canola is so patchy and late it should be baled or sprayed out for chemfallow. Is canola greenfeed or straw a viable option for feed? Is there even money to but it or are you better off selling animals? Typing on my blackberry so forgive typos.

[per]

Much worse situation. For the first time in my career I think that we will destock this fall to balance to what feed is available from our farm. At this point it doesn't look like we will go into the winter with huge numbers.

[nicolaas]

we are culling hard this spring, and have the cull pairs and singles on a separate pasture. I have a feeling we are going to run out of grass, so may sell sooner than later. I havn't looked at cow prices lately, but maybe I shouldn't look. One thing I know, There will not be any straw or hay or silage available in my neck of the woods even if we get lots of rain from now on. Everything is just too short, and hay is headed out. I am glad I culled hard last year as well.

[grassfarmer]

It looks way worse to me Ron. I didn't consider selling cows in 02/03 and we got through OK. It's hard to imagine that we are not going to sell a percentage this time - maybe up to a third. It really becomes a fairly easy decision this time around - cull values last fall were desperate at <$500 but it was still more than a lot of calves brought. The concept of feeding a cow even for a six month winter on hay bales at $80 is ridiculous without a promise of substantially higher calf prices. The problems I see this time are how will the auctions/packers handle the wall of cows that will inevitably come their way very soon. Could we see a third of the Alberta herd liquidated?
On the positive side there could be a pile of cheap feed around this fall with the crops the way they are. In my area at least the crops are lush now, but are far too late in my opinion. If we get early frost or more drought stress there could be lots of silage or greenfeed around. This is a bit of a timing issue - I think many cows will be shipped before the crops get harvested. I think lots of cows will be out of grass in August and just maybe if they get shipped early the feed price might drop later in the fall if lots of crops don't make it. I would guess there will be some type of disaster aid at some point - don't know what or when(not really looking for it)but if it comes along we will pocket it.
Ron as someone with crop how would you folks manage if your crops were only salvageble for silage/greenfeed given the high input costs this year? - is it doable with crop insurance or is it as big a disaster for you as beef guys?

[dfarms11]

To answer you Ron, canola makes feed perfectly fine. Silaged or baled, just trickeyer to put up. If you silage it, make sure to let it wilt and dry down a bit, you want it a little lower moisture. There is way too much moisture in freshly cut canola. Pasture wise, the cows will lick it to the ground! Granted it takes them a few days to get to like it, but once they do, they eat it like crazy. Baling canola is really tough since it is very difficult to get it to dry down. We just left it out in the swaths until we needed it and baled a weeks worth at a time and brought it home and fed it. Wrapping would have worked fine, but didn't have one. Don't plan on leaving wrapped bales till next year if you didn't need them. Neighbour did that and wasted them! Fed the cows from Aug first till mid winter with canola in 2002 and it worked out just fine.

[dfarms11]

Grassfarmer, as far as how well off we will be all depends on crop ins. Right now they say every crop will have a value and will be deducted from payments. It will then be our decision whether combining is worth more than salvaging for feed. Right now, I can't see how our crops could make more than a few bu/acre. Hell, we have 3 fields of canola that are still black! Who knows, we'll see.

[coppertop]

grassfarmer, did you get any rain last
evening ? It clouded up here several times
during the day and we got a little shower,
but most of the clouds seemed to go south
toward your country.

[per]

Do you think we could swath graze the canola? I am surrounded by the stuff that some has yet to cabbage or bolt. The hard part is talking straight grain farmers into letting cows in their fields. Not a fan of using mechanical means when the cows are portable.

[smcgrath76]

I think we are hopefully better off this
year. We were the epi-centre for '02
and had less than 1/2 inch of rain in 6
months. This year we have already
trimmed cows down, we have implemented
more pasture management over the last 10
to 15 years that is paying more
dividends than it did in 2002 (we are
further along). We carry moisture
insurance and we have been fortunate
enough to have a few showers. And we
have some carryover feed.
The risk in our area is really for grain
farmers as the showers have meant most
have to spray to remove weeds that will
use up all of those expensive fertilizer
inputs.
All I can say is that we are pretty
lucky this year in comparison to last
year, and it is a really good thing we
keep a lot of litter on our pastures.

[grassfarmer]

I like canola silage - it saved our skin in 02 as the local colony had 4000 ton which they mixed and sold with 1000 ton of immature oat silage made in November. It was low nitrate excellent feed (canola was only 30% moisture)that we got fairly cheap because they couldn't afford to haul it far. This year I think they went wall to wall barley with some oats and peas.

No Coppertop, we just got a few drops last night. This year is weird because normal weather patterns seem reversed. Some normally dry areas seem to have done better than expected for moisture where some wet areas like ours are missing out. Areas of Colorado that have been dry for a decade are getting lots of moisture this year. Locally there has been 3/4 an inch more rain north of a highway 2 miles north of us. Same time there has been 3/4 an inch more on a range road running 2 miles south of us which luckily landed on some pasture we are renting. Normally we are the extremely wet band between these two roads that gets more moisture than anywhere else.
Yesterday was a bad day - the second day of hotter, windy weather and some pastures on higher land are wilting. Gone from dark green to hay on ungrazed areas and from light green to a sickly yellow on grazed areas.
At least they are talking about showers for this week now.

[dfarms11]

I don't see why you couldn't swath graze canola. Thats about the only thing we did not do, into winter that is. When we turned the cows into the canola field, I had swathed a couple rounds to see if I could bale it but left it and they cleaned them up too. Now they were going into green canola not heavily podded stuff. It was actually silaged a month or more before and was all regrowth. Just keep that in mind for swath grazing. It would probably have to be cut mid Aug, while there are still flowers on it, to keep the green in it, I wood think.

[coppertop]

grassfarmer, I always check the Weather
Network and Environment Canada, they will
have completely different weather forecasts
for the same day at times. At least they
are both calling for showers this week. I
can remember many years when a forecast for
showers would result in a three day rain,
maybe we will be as lucky this week !!!

[grassfarmer]

I have been looking at Accuweather.com and it is the most depressing forecast. Maybe it's designed for folks that like to sunbathe.
The others are all looking good for this week.

[coppertop]

I just got home from town and nearly decked
a lady at the Post Office who said she
HOPED it DIDN'T rain because she was going
to the Ponoka Stampede and was camping !!!
I told her that we are all desperate for
rain and she looked at me like I was from
outer space !!!

[dalek]

Wish I could ship you a day or two of rain. We have 6 straight wet days in the forecast, everybody around (Central Ontario) is at least 2 weeks behind on haying, and there are hundreds if not thousands of acres in the fairly immediate area that are still too wet to plant after 2 months of mud and now it's pretty well too late for anything anyway.