ON-FARM THOUGHTS: When Life Hands You Lemons: Make Lemonade

by Larry Wegner, MFGA Board Alumni

A “black swan event” is a term well-used in stock market analysis to describe an unpredictable event that is beyond what is normally expected of a situation and has potentially severe consequences.

As ag producers we all will, at some point and time, have a black swan event that puts us to the test and challenges us to overcome. My wife Rosemary and I had our personal black swan event after moving to Manitoba in 2003 and three weeks later after taking possession of our new farm, a case of BSE (bovine spongiform encephalopathy) was declared in Alberta.

The fall-out from that was earth-shattering for producers like us. The residual impacts are still being felt today, 21 years later. However, in hindsight, while I would never wish another BSE crisis on anyone anywhere regardless of country, it made me become a better and more adaptive manager of our farm.

But it was not easy.

Our sons, Herb and Max, have taken over management of our cattle operation. In December when we did our pregnancy check it was a wreck. All through fall we had heard rumors of poor bred up. But, you could have knocked us over with a feather when 40 per cent of our herd was in the open pen. We had pulled and marketed the olds, lame, skinny and ugly ones before we checked the herd, we normally have 5 to 10 per cent in the open pen. We believe that if we are doing a good job running our herd, our breeding replacement heifer will be better quality than any cows we have. Most years we have 75-85 per cent bred for the first cycle. This year, very few were bred after the first cycle.

So now we must ask ourselves … “What Happened?”

After two months of my own reach out to others in the industry, we have developed a leading rationale as to why. But we are still not 100 per cent sure. We did not restock after the 2022 season as I was not confident that we had broken the drought cycle. We had enough forage for the year and grazed until the day we pregnancy-checked in late December. We move cows every day or every second day to fresh forage. Our cows and calves were always full when they were moved. We even did some hay and haylage for winter feed. All cattle were well looked after with cattle mineral and High Boot salt. They never seemed to satisfy their requirements and we always had the tubs cleaned out a few days later.

We had lots of bull power. We had each bull with a group of females (five herds) to see what worked as mating for calf quality. The new bulls to the herd were season checked and passed. After the first cycle we started to combine herds and at the end of the second cycle we pulled the two oldest bulls, so the younger bulls had a chance and stayed with the cows till late fall. Every cow was exposed to three different bulls over the season.

We hired a beef consulting company to do liver biopsy and feed tests. All levels were good including copper, but selenium was high. We reached out again to my beef industry network in Western Canada and asked what they have heard or seen in their areas. They had all heard about the low bred ups in their areas, ranging from just above normal to terrible. We were not alone in this boat and the boat seemed to be growing bigger the more we heard from others. There was no common link that we all shared that other than the dry conditions we all faced. There seemed to be hot spots for poor conception and then all around those hot spots seemed to be normal (maybe they can tell a better story than I can). I heard a video blog market analysis from Iowa about the high open rate in the Northern States. There are diseases that could be a factor. But I have yet to narrow it down.

What have we learned?

It seems to affect those who calve in the second quarter of the year. The early calvers were not affected as much. Copper has been a suspect in many cases but in ours it was at a good level. I have participated in Manitoba Beef and Forage Initiatives/ Manitoba Beef Producers three-part presentation series on what might be causes, what to look for. (posted on MBFI web page). The worst levels seem aligned with areas with poor water quality. We were fine with our water. The only thing that comes up as a common point among my own network outreach and questions is drought. What do we do if the drought does not break this spring? Will we face this again next year, or will things get worse? What else can we do to be proactive?

I am writing this to remind you that we all have things that come out of left field and keep us humble. Talking to other producers and being open about what we are dealing with is part of life. While some people are private about what has happened to them, we all deal with life issues in our own way. I am hoping that by talking about our issue that others can learn from us. Before the disappointing pregnancy check, Max and Herb planned on expanding their breeding herd. After that day in December, they are now trying to hang on and hope it does not repeat this year. They will keep their young open cows/heifers (they will not get any more chances) and sell all the mature open cows, so the herd is now younger than before.

As we look back through our herd books and take a high-level view, we may have been too hard on the cows last winter and the later and cooler spring did not help. Although the cows calved, cleaned, and mothered well, we did have a few granny cows that expired on us. We did have both bulls in the heifer mob go lame just after they were turned out, we lost most of the first cycle on those heifers in 2022. In 2023 we had less time for the heifers to recover from calving and flesh up for breeding and a few more than normal come back open. On the other side we had a late cow calve and only had three weeks from calving till breeding catch on the first cycle and stay bred, so go figure we also lost our only heifer and that, was unexpected.

These reflections from our operation are no different to most other producer operations. For some reason, for us, something is out of line. Like I told my sons when life hands you lemons: make lemonade. If you get tired of lemonade, make a lemon pie or lemon tarts. Maybe this is Mother Nature’s way of surviving these dry times. We hear and see that the local deer population had lower fawn birth numbers this year. Nature does not care about production, but rather, being adaptable. Nature is survival of the fittest. These are the cards we are dealt, and we have work with them or fold up and go get a new job in town. All we can do is do our very best work today and plan for tomorrow.

May your rains be timely, your forages be plentiful, and your calves be fat.

Have a great spring,

Larry