Cattle farmers brace for the cold after drought, high feed costs

It could be a long, lean winter in cattle country as drought-ravaged western Canadian ranchers struggle to feed their cattle through the cold months.

Jocelyn Vasco and her husband, Travis, have spent much of the summer and fall preparing near the town of Stand in the southwest corner of Saskatchewan. They've worked hard to grow their own forage crops, even removing several thousand acres of durum wheat that wasn't growing well enough to sell and instead cutting and baling it for feed.

However, after five straight years of very little rain on the property where the Travis family has ranched for more than a century, the parched land can only produce so much. That's why the couple made the tough decision to downsize their herd last year, culling nearly 20 percent of their cows by sending them to slaughter at weaning time.


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