The executive director of Winter Cereals Canada reports winter wheat has been a particularly popular ingredient this year among those formulating rations for feeding livestock.
The number of acres seeded to winter wheat fell by about 5,000 this fall from last fall with numbers dropping in Manitoba, remaining fairly steady in Saskatchewan and increasing in Alberta but crops that were planted have been doing well.
Jake Davidson, the executive director of Winter Cereals Canada says this year winter wheat is extremely popular as a feed wheat.
My people are telling me that they’re turning around and selling number 2 winter wheat and getting more money as a feed wheat. It’s kind of distorting the market a little, it’s kind of distorting the numbers for the crop insurance because guys are reporting they’re selling this as feed wheat and it’s actually number 2 or in some cases number 1.
The hog industry really supports the winter wheat and it doesn’t do any harm in the poultry industry either. The protein is a little lower. Winter wheat will run in the 10.5 and 11s when you will see the spring wheats in the 13s. This year the winter wheat is showing up higher. It’s showing up in the 13 to 14s but spring wheat was showing up higher too. That has kind of disappointed a lot of people both in the spring and winter wheat growing areas because they’re not seeing the premium being offered for protein that they would like to see.
When everything comes up good grain companies don’t particularly want to pay a premium that they’ve paid in the past for 12 percent winter wheats because there’s an abundance of it and they’re going to it whether they pay the premium anyway.
Davidson says, because the move of falcon from the milling class the general purpose class a lot of growers in Manitoba are opting for other varieties.
However, he says, a lot of growers still like it, especially the colonies who are growing winter wheat to feed their pigs and chickens and they’re getting f\good yields and they’re used to working with it but it is slowly being replaced.
