Feeding canola meal to cattle

Hodgeville, Sask., looks like it could be a postcard for the province — surrounded by flat fields and cattle grazing in nearby pastures, while an old elevator stands watch at the edge of town on Railroad Avenue, just like so many other small towns in the Canadian Prairies.

In contrast, Big Muddy Valley, located near the United States border, is a sweeping range of badlands. The environment is harsh, meaning it isn’t great to grow crops — but works just fine for raising cattle.

Yet these dramatically different locations both have producers conducting the same experiment.

Circle Y Ranch

Michael and Tamela Burgess run Circle Y Ranch in the Big Muddy Valley, where they raise Black Angus cattle and registered quarter horses.

They are involved with a research project run by the Saskatchewan Stock Growers Association (SSGA) and the Government of Saskatchewan on how canola meal can benefit cattle.

“I’ve been using it for a long time myself beforehand,” Michael Burgess says. “The first year they were doing it more at the university level and I kind of jokingly asked if I was going to get royalties because I’ve been doing it for quite a while and they didn’t realize that so they knew I was interested in it.”

Cedarlea Farms

Located near Hodgeville Sask., Cedarlea Farms is owned and operated by Garner and Lori Deobald, alongside their daughter and son-in-law Kylie and Brian Hawkins, and their grandson, Griffin Hawkins. The Deobalds’ ranch was started by Garner’s great-grandfather and they have been in that area of the province since 1910.

“It’s a short-grass country,” says Garner Deobald. “And as part of the world here, we run a herd of about 300-325 breeding females. A big majority of them are purebred Charolais cattle. We do have some commercial cows here as well. We utilize community pasture for the commercial cattle and have an annual bull sale every year in early April.”

Deobald was recently elected as the president of the Saskatchewan Stock Growers Association. Through his work there, he got involved with the canola meal project.

Canola crushers

At the Saskatchewan Stock Growers Association annual general meeting and conference in Assiniboia, Sask., at the beginning of June, Dwayne Summach, a livestock and feed extension specialist with the Ministry of Agriculture, explained the project to conference goers.

“We’re looking at supplementing canola meal,” Summach says. “What makes the most sense to a cow-calf operator and what class of cattle benefits the most by getting more or less protein?”

He says it’s important to conduct research like this, especially within Saskatchewan, because of the new Cargill canola crushing plant that is being built in Regina. The Cargill plant is projected to crush a million tonnes of canola annually and is set to be completed in early 2024.

Viterra also announced a Regina canola crushing plant in 2021. A press release noted the company plans to crush 2.5 million metric tonnes, which would make the plant the world’s largest integrated canola crush facility. At the time, the goal was to have the plant operational by late 2024.

Federated Co-operatives Limited and Richardson have also announced canola crushing plants coming to Saskatchewan.

“There’s going to be a whole lot more canola meal produced,” Summach says, adding that beef producers “should think about buying it before it leaves our borders.”

Canola meal research

The research took place at both the Burgess and Deobald ranches. Each ranch provided two groups of 25 yearlings — a control group that would just graze pasture, and another group that would be fed canola meal.

Deobald had never used canola meal, so he followed the instructions to a T. For 60 days, he fed one group 1.5 kg of canola meal mash every other day. Deobald didn’t feed any supplementation to the control group. Both groups were grazed on crested wheat grass pastures, with a bit of native grass.

Burgess has been feeding his cattle canola meal for a long time, so he stuck to his tried-and-tested recipe for the treatment group — 1.11 kg of canola meal every second day, as part of a salt blend.

“We’re in an area where we’re pretty good for winter grazing in the Big Muddy here,” Burgess says. “I know it wouldn’t work for everybody. But we have natural shelter up in the badlands here. And we save grass for the cows for the winter. So it still gets quite deep, but it’s a pretty good wintering spot for the cows.”

Results

According to Summach, the control group at Circle Y Ranch started at 914 pounds and ended at 927 pounds with an average daily gain of 0.20. The supplement group of cattle started at 902 pounds and ended at 935 pounds with an average daily gain of 0.51.

At Cedarlea Farms, their control group started at 1,315 pounds and ended at 1,404 pounds with an average daily gain of 1.47. Their supplement group started at 1,297 pounds and ended at 1,409 pounds with an average daily gain of 1.86.

“We took some pictures along the way and they gained a little bit more weight,” says Deobald. “In the end when we did weigh them off, the supplemented group started off at a lighter weight and finished out a heavier weight. So they definitely did gain better and perform better on grass. So again, when the groups are very close anyway, that isn’t a real noticeable difference. But when you look at them every day from start to finish and have some pictures to look at, they did appear to be a little bit heavier.”

In his presentation, Summach laid out the cost of using canola meal. For Cedarlea Farms, the control group’s cost/lb. of gain totalled $7.65. The supplemented group’s cost/lb. of gain came in at $4.14 (including pasture and supplement costs per head per day).

For Circle Y Farms, the control group totalled $1.18 for cost/lb. of gain. For the supplemented group, everything combined totalled $1.19 cost/lb. of gain.

Burgess says he thinks the cattle would have gained more if they had been in poorer shape going into it.

“They were in good shape and basically needed to be just carried through maintenance diets for the winter,” he says. “So I think that’s why it showed a higher cost of gain.”

Burgess thinks that the cost of gain would have been higher if the control group had been using lick tubs, as he doubts the cattle would have gained any more than with canola meal, but the cost would have been higher.

Moving forward

Summach says now he is interested in seeing how the cattle continue to change because of the canola meal.

“The next interesting thing would be to watch these groups to see if there’s a differential in herd breed-back, if this group has the hormones or not,” Summach says.

Deobald says with the new crushers coming and the results they saw from the research, he would use canola meal again on his operation.

“I mean, with the amount that we fed them, the performance sure was admirable. And the performance was probably better than I thought it was going to be. So we would do it again, in a heartbeat.”