Rancher prays for snowy winter to help bounce back from drought

While beach days and Saskatchewan Roughriders games are on the minds of many across Saskatchewan in the middle of August, livestock producers are already dreaming about winter.

Glen Gabel, who raises cattle near Regina, said they need long-term help from Mother Nature to recover from the impacts of the dry conditions this summer.

“What we need this winter is — now, a lot of people don’t want to hear this — we need a bunch of snow. We need snow to get some runoff to start to fill the dugouts and ponds and everything else, just to get that water supply back there. Then we’ve got to hope and pray for spring rains to carry us through,” Gabel said on Tuesday’s Greg Morgan Morning Show.

Gabel said this drought is similar to the one in 1988 and farmers are dealing with problems that are starting to pile up.

He said a lot of people are stressed with the daily, extra work and expense of finding a water source, then hauling it back to the farm.

“If we don’t get some rain pretty darn quick, these pastures are drying up so fast, I think it’s just going to compound things. Do we have to pull the cattle off the grass sooner and start feeding them?” said Gabel.

He explained farmers aren’t going to have enough feed and are looking for alternate methods of feed. If they graze the pastures down too much this fall, Gabel questions what that will do to the pastures in the spring.

“We’ve got to look ahead to May of 2022 and say, ‘How is that going to impact us in the long term?’ It’s not just a tomorrow thing, it’s months and months this is going to affect us,” said Gabel.

Gabel said a lot of breeding stock animals in 1988 got shipped into the meat system. He said that’s happening again now. A lot of older cows are going to auction as producers downsize to a level where they can hopefully keep it at for the long term.