Drought forces Canadians to sell cattle

The pastures on Craig Todd’s ranch in western Canada are so scorched by all the hot, dry weather in recent months that his cattle have little to eat. After spending $8,110 on extra feed pellets — an unplanned expense for a herd that should be munching on free grass — Todd is now considering selling as many as 50 animals to get through winter.

“I might knock a few more off” to reduce costs, said Todd, whose raises cattle on land an hour’s drive west of Swift Current, Saskatchewan. “Going into next year, if we don’t get any rain, I’m in as much trouble as most people are.”

For Canada, the world’s sixth-largest beef exporter, a worsening drought across the southern prairie provinces has probably ended any chance of a rebound for the domestic cattle industry. The herd was hit by several cases of madcow disease more than a decade ago, followed by floods and labor shortages. In 2015, it shrank to a 22-year low.

The herd was expected to expand slightly this year, but deteriorating grazing conditions have driven up the price of hay used as feed to as much as $162 a ton, twice as much as a year earlier. Some ranchers will cull more animals from their herds to reduce costs after parts of Saskatchewan and Alberta got less than 60 percent of normal rainfall since April 1, according to Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, a government agency. — Bloomberg News