National survey gives producers a better look at what practices can spread around Canada

The Beef Cattle Research Council (BCRC) wrapped up their inaugural cow-calf survey and is sharing some of the results with people around the country.

The BCRC, funded thanks to check-offs from cattle sales in Canada, put on the survey to find how producers are working with their cattle and what practices could be adopted in the future.

After sending out a survey last fall, with producers sending those back and the results being tabulated.

Reynold Bergen, the science director for the BCRC, says they did the survey to get a better national picture.

"There's been, you know, one-off surveys that this regional survey, their producers this year, and then the province will do it in another year, and different people asking different questions, it was kind of hard to get a national picture. So what we did was the national survey, so that everybody's asking and answering the same questions at the end of the day.

With 600 responses representing 3 per cent of the national cow herd, Bergen says that was a great sample for their team to work with.

Those questions were varied, from breeding, management, marketing practices, and more.

When they looked at a few different sectors they found some areas that Bergen thinks some areas can improve on.

"One example of an opportunity that kind of stands out for Saskatchewan is feed testing. You know it's it's important to test your feed for a couple of reasons. One is you know feed can be green, but that doesn't tell you what the nutritional value is, doesn't tell you how digestible it is, doesn't tell how much energy there is, doesn't tell you the protein content just tells you that it's green. So if you do test your feed, you can get a sense of what is the actual nutritional profile."

In their study, they found that 43 per cent of producers test their feed, which is below the national average of 45 per cent and below Alberta's 60 per cent and Manitoba's 54 per cent.

Getting those numbers means that governments could incentivize feed testing, or businesses that do feed testing could focus on getting their service to saskatchewan.

More surveys are likely to be held in the future, says Bergen, as other farm topics could use a national viewpoint.

"Probably every five years, you know that's kind of the cycle we're aiming for. But the next step that we're going to get from this is we're going to take all of these survey results and we're going to put them into context with the stuff that's been the surveys that have been done in the past."

"We can start to see is the needle moving in different production practices, is it increasing? Is it dropping off? Where do we need to put more effort or develop better information, resources and tools for producers so that we can do two things: we can use their check-off money better and also you know help them by generating the tools that are most useful to them."