Beef herds were culled in drought areas last year as there was a shortage of feed. Beef cows, above, on Jan. 28 step into snow at a Mountain-area farm in Dundas County. (Nelson Zandbergen photo)

DROUGHT HANGOVER:

Thanks to last year’s bone dry summer Eastern Ontario farmers culled herds, installed pumps and dug deeper wells

Nelson Zandbergen
Farmers Forum

OTTAWA — At least one Ontario livestock producer is still feeling the pinch of last year’s severe drought. While most water-table concerns have eased, last year’s reduced hay and forage yields left Stormont County’s Jamink Farm with enough feed for the organic milking herd but not enough for their popular beef sideline.

“We reduced our inventory,” Julia Booijink, partner in the operation, confirmed for Farmers Forum. “We have to focus on the dairy herd first.”

The farm is still taking orders for freezer beef but processing has been scaled back. “We’re not fulfilling quarters or halves until late into 2026,” Booijink explained. All of Jamink’s beef animals were offspring of the milking herd, dairy-beef crosses raised up to market weight on the farm.

Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Agribusiness dairy cattle specialist Christoph Wand noted that producers in affected areas “culled hard” and closely examined heifer inventories across all livestock sectors.

Some locales in Eastern Ontario saw rainfall of less than 40 % to 50 % of normal over the summer last year, triggering Level 3 Low Water declarations in places like the South Nation and Raisin River watersheds, south of Ottawa.

Beyond the impact on yields, shallow wells also ran dry through the summer and fall, prompting extra calls to water haulers and pump companies. A representative from one Ottawa-area water hauling firm, who did not want to be named, reported a noticeable uptick in demand for dug-well top-ups last summer and fall, “but nothing crazy,” and drought-related water hauling “completely stopped” once the ground froze in December.

World of Pumps, also in the Ottawa area, handled “lots of calls in the fall” and installed a higher than usual number of holding tanks and booster pumps, allowing farmers and other property owners to store water from otherwise low-output wells.

“Over 24 hours you can have enough water that you can use in those peak moments without any issues,” World of Pumps’ Raymond Farley explained.

“Last year was the busiest ever” for calls related to wells running dry,” he said.

Lanark dairy farmer Deb Knapton reported switching from a shallow-well jet pump to a deep-well submersible in October. The new pump draws water from 90 feet down in the 1950s-era drilled well, Knapton said. The old pump went dry drawing from 25 feet down.

The water table was still down 10 feet from normal when the new pump went in (in October),” she said. “We are not having any issues now. We were lucky that we had more depth in our well.”