ABP Environmental Award to Deer Creek -- Photo credit to Deer Creek web site

By Dori Modney with files from Alberta Beef Producers

Southern Alberta’s Deer Creek Livestock Co. recognized for environmental stewardship

Dec 6, 2019 | 3:56 PM

MILK RIVER — While environmental concerns are top of mind for many across Alberta, there are those in the agriculture community who have been quietly caring for the land that sustains farms and ranches. They have been successful in maintaining the land, not only for their livelihood, but to sustain the natural flora and fauna on and around their land.

One of those ranches is the Deer Creek Livestock Company, which has been awarded an Alberta Beef Producers (ABP) Environmental Stewardship Award. The award goes to a cattle operation that demonstrates leadership in environmental stewardship.

At ABP’s annual General meeting on Tuesday, Dec. 3, the 2020 award was presented to Southern Alberta’s Deer Creek Livestock Company. The ranch is located along the Milk River, to the west of Highway-4, just outside the community of Milk River.

Jeff Smith is one of the shareholders of Deer Creek, along with James Bekkering, Richard Visser, Gateway Livestock and the Turner family. Smith describes the ranch’s operation.

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“We run about 1200 cows down there, they graze year round, we wean the calves in early October and we finish the steers and back on the heifers and they go into our replacement heifer program.”

According to Smith, health and and soil conditions are important to the ranch.

“We don’t get an abundance of moisture, so any moisture we do get, we have to manage with what we have and manage the grass within that as well. The water that we have is vital to the operation and the grass management through different programs like Multi-SAR and we’ve been able to assess the grass and improve it and increase our production at the ranch, with those improvements.”

“The Multi-SAR (Species at Risk) program provides recommendations and ideas that follow their habitat conservation strategy, based on four pillars: engagement; respect; environment and monitoring and evaluation. We do quite a few different programs with them – solar panels, watering projects, whatever may fit their pillars and the ranch as well.”

A solar panel watering system pump water away from the river to keep cattle from damaging the river banks, and solar fencing is used to isolate grasslands and control grazing.

Smith says the care they take on the land is reflected in the number of wildlife species that call Deer Creek Livestock Co. home.

“There’s about 103 different wildlife species on the ranch, some are endangered – there’s elk, we’ve seen some moose lately, quite a few pronghorns and different species such as birds and toads, one’s that we understand are very rare but, we come across.”

The ranch operates no-till on its farmland, where they grow their own feed crops of hay, alfalfa and sorghum for the cattle. The goal is to produce beef while still caring for the land. The operation began in the 1900’s and was purchased from the Gilchrist family by the Deer Creek company in 2011 – it’s future is clearly in good hands.

Deer Creek Livestock graphic — credit Deer Creek website