Spurred by shrinking barley acreage over the past 20 years, western Canadian cattle feeders have increasingly included wheat in feedlot diets. Over this time, Canadian barley acreage declined by nearly 155,000 acres annually on average, while wheat production climbed approximately 440,000 acres each year. Though its availability and cost competitiveness have made it a natural choice, little research had been conducted to examine the use of wheat in cattle rations.

Canadian agriculture has faced COVID-19 issues within every industry subset. Challenges in southern Alberta’s Feedlot Alley, the province’s central hub for feeder cattle, have piled up since early 2019 and the global pandemic was just the latest hit in a whirlwind stretch.

Following a generally cool, sometimes too wet, sometimes too dry growing season, an unhappy portion of Alberta’s 2019 grain crop was snowed under and overwintered in the field.