Popular livestock expo returning to Swift Current for 14th year
A large one-day agriculture trade show that has become an annual tradition in Swift Current is back for its 14th year with a full-house of exhibitors.
The Saskatchewan Livestock Expo, formerly known as the Cramer Ag Expo, takes place in the Stockade at Kinetic Exhibition Park from 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Feb. 22.
The 110 available booths for exhibition space sold out about two months ago and the commercial exhibits at the event will feature a variety of products and services from over 80 different companies.
Doug Cramer from Cramer Expo and Event Management said the event includes vendors from Quebec, British Columbia as well as the United States.
“We have exhibitors from all over Canada and the northern U.S. coming to present their products and company to the producers,” he noted.
Entry to the event is free and he expects there will be visitors from a wide area. Attendees in previous years came from all over western Canada as well as from places south of the border such as Montana and South Dakota.
He felt the ongoing success of the show and the support from vendors are due to its location in a livestock intensive part of the province and the presence of a significant number of Hutterite colonies in southwest Saskatchewan.
“They’re involved with livestock production, whether it be dairy, poultry or hogs,” he said. “So that’s a big draw. Most of our vendors are manufacturers or suppliers to the livestock industry.”
The expo will feature a breakout session at 11 a.m. with a presentation by Shac Solutions Inc. from Redcliff, Alberta, about their agricultural products for swine producers, manure management and soil management.
Cramer noted that there used to be such breakout sessions in the initial years of the expo and they felt it will be useful to bring it back as a way to assist producers with relevant information.
“We just decided to start doing a little more textual information on the new products with all the pressure on use of fertilizer and manure handling and environmental pressures,” he said.
The Cramer Cup competition series has been a popular and key feature of the annual expo and it is again offering opportunities for producers to participate in the pork quality, nest run egg, hay/forage and baking competitions.
This competition also has a charitable component that Cramer considers to be an important part of the event. It has raised a significant amount of funds for charities through the auctioning of the top five hog carcasses. The winning entries from the nest run eggs and the homemade pie baking competition are also sold and the funds are donated to different charities.
In addition, the meat from the hog entries for the pork quality competition are donated to charities. These beneficiaries include Swift Current charities and meat is also donated to the Souls Harbour Rescue Mission, which operates meal programs in Regina and Moose Jaw, as well as the Chili for Children lunch program in Regina.
Cramer said on average around $20,000 worth of fresh pork will be donated to charities each year and each expo has raised about $25,000 in cash for distribution to various non-profit organizations.
Thunder Creek Pork from Moose Jaw, which is a subsidiary of Donald’s Fine Foods, has come on board as a new partner for the pork quality competition.
“This is the first year they’ve joined us in in procuring the hogs and processing them for us at no charge for the charity purposes,” he said. “That way the charities that receive the meat don’t have to pay for the processing, because that’s always been a big cost.”
There will be a lot of excitement at the expo when the sale of champions and charity auction starts at 4:30 p.m., which concludes the event on a high note.
The expo will receive 32 hog carcasses for this year’s pork quality competition, which will provide close to 8,000 pounds of fresh pork for donations to different nonprofit organizations. There will be entries from around 25 egg producers for the nest run egg competition. Dairy producers and some cattle producers from the Swift Current area and the southwest will participate in the silage and forage quality competition.
“And then the baking competition is always just a lot of fun,” he said. “We usually have 30 or 40 pies and we get five or six of the vendors to be the judges. The winner of that gets a trophy and then we auction the pie off, and usually the pie goes for $200 or $300. Then we take all the entries from the pie competition and wee serve it with coffee in the afternoon.”
Cramer originally began the expo, then known as the Cramer Ag Expo, for his vendors and customers when he was still operating an animal nutrition company in Swift Current “It started with 20 booths that just kept growing,” he recalled. “So I opened it up to the whole livestock industry.”
The rebranding of the expo two years ago as the Saskatchewan Livestock Expo became necessary after he sold his company and he still enjoys to be back in Swift Current.
“I wanted to make it more of a provincial industry show rather than something that was tied to my animal nutrition company and it really just opened it up to more visitors and sponsorship,” he said.
More information about the Saskatchewan Livestock Expo and the exhibitor booth list are available on the Cramer Expo and Event Management website at www. cramereventmanagement.com