By Alex McCuaig

Cattle prices

Busy day at this year’s final calf sale

Nov 8, 2019 | 5:27 PM

Medicine Hat, AB – It was a tough summer for the short-grass pasture across southeastern Alberta but that didn`t appear to affect to badly the weighted averages of calves at their final sale of the year at Medicine Hat Feeding Company Friday.

More than 5,000 calves trampled past buyers at the auction in a three-hour frenzy of sales at MHFC with owner Lyle Taylor saying calf weights were better than expected.

“We felt coming into this fall run, it`ll be fifty to a hundred bucks less,” said Taylor. “In fact, some of our weaning weights have been heavier even with the dry conditions.”

Taylor put the unanticipated boost in calf weights down to some of the hard grass providing a better protein mix with cow-calf operators seeing better returns.

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But Brad Betcker of T Bar Cattle Company said some of those gains on the calf side have been off-set by higher feed costs with hay production stifled due to adverse weather in the province, driving the price up.

“Guys are getting the same kind of money but lots of guys are having to buy a lot of hay which is taking away the profit margin quite a bit on the cattle this year,” he said.

But with China reopening its border to Canadian beef exports, Taylor said that`s another optimistic turn for a sometimes volatile commodity.

“Any time we can see more people wanting to eat our beef and pork, that`s really positive.”