Cattle feed is hard to come by these days, and farmers and feedlot operators in the Foothills are feeling the pinch.
The dry conditions of the past few summers have left hay and other feed grains at extreme low points across the country, pushing cattle producers to import large quantities of corn from the U.S. to feed their herd through the winter.
Transportation challenges exasperated by Omicron and bitterly cold temperatures in recent weeks have delayed shipments of corn from across the border significantly, leaving cattle farmers in a tough spot.
“We’re at the crisis stage now,” Canadian Cattlemen's Association president Bob Lowe said via The Canadian Press.
"Nobody wants to look at a bunch of cattle starving to death around their operation. We don’t want that, and we’ll do anything to keep that from happening, but this could become an animal welfare issue," he continued.
Doug Price from Rimrock Feeders near Longview and Korova Feeders near Acme, which house about 90,000 head total, said their feed situation is stable at the moment, but they are doing everything they can to ensure that they don't find themselves in dire straits.
To mitigate the unpredictability of feed arrival via train, Price said they have strayed away from putting all their eggs in one basket.
They have purchased trainloads of feed set to arrive at multiple different grain elevators as a fail-safe for when one of them doesn't show up, which seems to be inevitable as of late.
"It's easy to buy it, but it's not as easy to get it delivered on time," said Price.
"We never know when the train is coming, so if we've got five different locations, maybe a train will come to one of them," he added.
Price said they are in a routine of processing feed as soon as they receive it and storing it in piles on the floor of their lots so they always have an eight to 10 day supply ready to go, rather than only two or three days.
Shortages are ripping through Alberta farms and feedlots and there are fears of running out of feed entirely.
According to the Alberta Cattle Feeders' Association, 75 per cent of their members have reported experiencing delays in corn shipments via rail since the beginning of 2022.
Janice Tranberg, president and chief executive of the Alberta Cattle Feeders' Association told The Canadian Press numerous large feedlot operators are anticipating running out of feed "within days."
"I'm not sure some people understand the magnitude of the situation," she said. "These feedlots house anywhere from 20,000 to 40,000 head, so this is dire."
Evan Hegedys, who is part of operations at the Rimrock and Korova feedlots, said that while they are doing okay for feed at the moment, having their supply reach zero is most definitely a concern.
"It takes a lot of hours to track down enough to feed the cattle and to know that we can feed the cattle," he said.
Canadian Pacific Railway chief financial officer Nadeem Velani said the number of carloads of corn transported to Alberta has increased substantially in recent years. More than 8,100 carloads travelled across the border in 2021 — 13 times more than the 2020 total of 600.
The rapid increase in demand required the company to create facilities to support a supply chain that had no existing resources, Velani added.
Transportation delays are the result of challenges faced by CP Rail this winter, according to Velani.
This includes the number of employees out sick with Omicron and frigid temperature that forced the company to assemble shorter trains forced to move at lower speeds.
In an email to The Canadian Press, CP Rail spokeswoman Salem Woodrow said the Calgary-based railway is "committed to servicing our customers and playing a role in enabling feed to be supplied to feedlots during this challenging crop year."
When reached for comment, Foothills MP and agriculture and food security critic John Barlow said the feed problem has been exacerbated by supply chain issues magnified by the cross-border vaccine mandate for truckers, which he called "poorly-timed and bad policy."
"When you're having difficulty accessing rail cars you look at other options like, obviously, trucking," he said. "Certainly from speaking to some of my distributors in the riding over the last few weeks, the Jan. 15 date that passed last week on the vaccine mandate for the transportation industry was looming large and they were very worried."
And certainly, it has played out to have a pretty big impact."
COVID-19 and cold weather are challenges currently faced by nearly everyone in the province, and Canadian Cattlemen's Association president and feedlot owner Lowe said he understands, but at the end of the day, cattle still need to be fed.
"They blame COVID and weather, and in my opinion those are two fairly valid excuses, but in the feeding industry we suffer through COVID and weather too but we still have to feed the cattle," he said. "CP Rail does not seem to understand that the cattle need to be fed.”
Hegedys explained that farmers are also having trouble feeding their cow-calf pairs, given that the drought left little forage.
"It's very hard to find a way to feed those right now as well," he said. "Canadians — and Americans as well — have been tricking the cow drastically this year because there is just nothing to feed them."
Leighton Kolk, who operates a feedlot in Iron Springs, Alta., in Lethbridge County, was expecting a train full of feed on Jan. 18. By Jan. 21, it still hadn't arrived and if it didn't show up by noon on the 23rd he told The Canadian Press he wouldn't be able to feed his cattle.
If he runs out entirely, Kolk said that he will be forced to put his herd on reduced rations.
"It would be like if you were used to getting three meals a day and then all of a sudden the only thing we have to feed you is dry Rice Krispies or something," he said.
"It's going to cause health issues, because you can't just go and change an animal's diet like that."
Price echoed that sentiment and said that not feeding his cows is not an option.
"You just can't stop," he said. "It's like [saying] "OK, next week we're not going to feed our kids."
