There certainly are enough negative comments flying around. So to start the year off, I want to talk about the two main animals in the ranching industry: horses and cattle.
When I became aware of it, I immediately ordered “Horse Pasture Management” edited by Paul Sharpe, retired professor at the University of Guelph, Ontario. It is a book dedicated to helping people provide a better life for horses.
Recently, with so many urban folks buying country property, it is timely to direct them to this 400 page Magnus Opus (a great work by the author.) It is really a textbook complete with end of chapter questions. It is about $100 and well worth it.
Many people new to horse care in a semi-arid climate will unwittingly overgraze an otherwise healthy sward of natural grassland or bush pasture.
There are no easy answers to how NOT to overgraze a paddock. Overgrazing can reduce the productive capacity of the pasture.
Over the years, I have read a lot and heard many presentations on grazing management.
At one such seminar, the guest speaker was Don Campbell from Northern Saskatchewan, a holistic management instructor. His response to my question about how to manage horse pasture was “Pick an unimportant piece of land and abuse it!”
No one wants to abuse any piece of land, but horses will graze small paddocks (10 acres or smaller to the ground. A person needs to add hay and maybe some oats if you are conditioning the horses for a lot of work. Better this than allowing selective and extensive overgrazing of larger parcels (160 acres).
Now about cows. These comments is about the financial side of running cows. The last major cost of production study was done in 2013-14 for several regions of B.C. The BC Cattlemen are updating that study.
Successive governments have neglected to keep up the analyses of the sustainability (profitability needed) to keep the farms and ranches going.) With inflation and consequential costs of production rising faster than the proceeds for sales growing concerns for the future require that we drill down into our businesses to determine
How we can decrease costs.
On the topic the local Community Futures is partnering with Cariboo Cattlemen’s and Thompson Rivers University to further this kind off analysis especially so new entrants in to ranching can look at “benchmark” costs in the industry and build enterprises that can stay afloat should the cattle price cycle drop.