A prominent Prairie veterinarian and businessperson says the death of live cattle auctions has been greatly exaggerated.
“I think for about 45 years, I’ve been hearing about the demise of the auctioneer system,” Dr. Kee Jim, a founding partner of Feedlot Health Management Services with stakes in numerous cattle-feeding companies in Canada and the United States, told the recent Livestock Markets Association of Canada convention in Medicine Hat, Alta.
Jim, who was inducted into the Alberta Cattle Feeders Hall of Fame and grew up on a ranch in the interior of British Columbia, was emphatic.
“Pretty much standard stuff. It’s actually not, it’s not going to happen … The auction marts will forever be an integral part of the cattle system in North America, and it simply relates to the demographics of production.”
He said the popular television series Yellowstone romanticized a form of cattle production in which tens of thousands of cattle graze hundreds of thousands of acres and earn hundreds of millions in profit.
However, Jim said that is simply not the reality.
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