Cole Barten, who works on a cow/calf operation south of Cardston, has seen the damage that problem elk can cause. This year, 100 elk got into stackyards and damaged fences on the ranch.

Alberta gives green light for problem elk hunting

Problem elk can cause thousands of dollars of damage to a ranch, but a new program allows them to be hunted

Reading Time: 5 minutes Alberta farmers and ranchers have been calling for a solution to the problem elk issue in the province, and the Government of Alberta has now responded by giving the green light to a problem elk hunting provision for Alberta’s producers.



(Assnat.qc.ca)

Set-aside funded for Quebec hog, cattle, big game producers

Feds, province pledge $21.8 million AgriRecovery plan

Farmers tending feeder hogs, fed cattle and big game animals such as elk, red deer, bison and wild boar in Quebec can expect $21.8 million in AgriRecovery to compensate for COVID-19’s drag on the province’s slaughter capacity. Federal Agriculture Minister Marie-Claude Bibeau and her Quebec counterpart Andre Lamontagne on Thursday announced their governments’ respective 60-40 […] Read more

The U.S. National Wildlife Health Center’s map of CWD’s distribution in North America as of December 2020. (USGS.gov)

Ontario to limit imports, transport of live elk, deer

Moves meant to keep out chronic wasting disease

Moving live captive cervids such as elk, deer, moose and caribou into or within Ontario is set to be banned under new provincial regulations to keep out chronic wasting disease (CWD). The province said Thursday it has amended regulations under its Fish and Wildlife Conservation Act that will ban anyone from importing live, captive cervids […] Read more


The U.S. National Wildlife Health Center and U.S. Geological Survey produce this map of CWD’s current distribution in North America. The version shown here is current to Sept. 9, 2019. (NWHC.usgs.gov)

Deer heads required from Kootenay region for CWD tests

The discovery of chronic wasting disease in deer in northwestern Montana has officials in CWD-free British Columbia tightening their testing net. The province on Wednesday announced a mandatory sampling program, in which hunters must submit heads from mule deer and white-tailed deer harvested in wildlife management units 4-1, 4-2, 4-3, 4-4, 4-5, 4-6 and 4-7 […] Read more

Elk farming provides a source of lean read meat and parts of the elk such as velvet from the horns are though by some cultures to have medicinal value.

Elk testing at Suffield finds no bovine tuberculosis

Reading Time: < 1 minute Testing of elk at CFB Suffield during the 2017-18 hunting season is complete and all results were negative. After bovine tuberculosis (bTB) was found in one beef cow in southeastern Alberta in 2016, officials with the wildlife branch of Alberta Environment and Parks worked with the Canadian Food Inspection Agency to develop a three-year testing […] Read more


With feed in short supply after a long winter and late start to spring, farmers found it particularly painful over the winter to lose hay to elk or deer.

Tired of providing a hay lunch for the neighbourhood?

Hay yards are magnets for elk and deer, but 3D fencing can be a lower-cost way to keep them out

Reading Time: 2 minutes A long winter coupled with a late and dry start to spring has stretched feed supplies across Alberta. Which means any loss of hay to wildlife last winter was especially painful. To avoid that grief — or at least lessen it — many producers on the Prairies have turned to three-dimensional fencing. Unlike typical fencing, […] Read more

Tuberculosis bacteria under an electron microscope. (Janice Haney Carr photo courtesy Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (U.S.))

All quarantines lifted in bovine TB probe

The mystery of how six Prairie cattle caught a Mexican strain of bovine tuberculosis (TB) is now expected to remain a mystery indefinitely. The Canadian Food Inspection Agency on Monday announced quarantines have been lifted from all Prairie cattle operations tested during its probe of a bovine TB outbreak beginning in the fall of 2016. […] Read more