CATTLE RANCHING.
When the buffalo disappeared from the plains, cattle ranching was
started in Southern Alberta. As early as 1880-1 some cattlemen brought
in herds from Montana. The buffalo and bunch grasses are very nutri-
tious, the country is well watered and the climate favorable for all-round
out-of-door grazing. Montana cattlemen to the south claimed Alberta was
too far north, but after years of experience Alberta men claimed that the
percentage of winter loss was less north than south of the 49th parallel.
The government reserved the country south of Calgary to the boundary
line for ranching purposes, that is to say that most of the land was not
open for homesteading. This reserved area was about 160 miles north
and south and 130 miles east and west. Leases were granted at a cent
an acre, on the condition that one animal per ten acres was put on the
land within three years. Ten thousand cattle would have to be running
]n a hundred thousand acre lease to carry out the condition.
The first big venture to attract public attention was that of Senator
Cochrane, of Montreal, after whom the town of Cochrane takes its name.
His example was followed by many others. By 1884 no less than forty-one
Lompanies were operating with a total acreage under lease of 2,253,513
acres. Of this 875,000 acres had had no stock placed on them.
"Kootenay Brown", who claimed to be the first squatter in Alberta,
tells how he was riding on the range one day when he met a man in a
buckboard behind a team of bronchos. The man proved to be Senator
Cochrane. The Senator said: "We are going to bring in several thousand
head of cattle here. They ought to live where the buffalo lived, and we
shall not need to feed them hay in a mild climate like this where you have
so little snow". Kootenay replied that this was a delusion, and he must
not compare domestic cattle with buffalo. The buffalo ate grass as close
as sheep, right to the roots, and when they ate a range down they moved
off to another range, traveling thousands of miles in a season. Then
too, a buffalo would face a storm but a cow or a steer went with the storm
regardless of where they were going. However the Senator would not
be convinced. His first ranch was in the Calgary country and in the first
season he lost about half of his herd. There was a mild season in the
Macleod district, 100 miles south that winter, so he shifted the scene
of his operations. The vagaries of our climate were illustrated by the
fact that in the second season the conditions were reversed, and his losses
were again very heavy, for the Macleod country had a hard winter for
stock. The Senator however was not a man to be easily discouraged. He
had a magnificent location between the Belly River and its big tributary
the Kootenay, and he stuck to his guns. The writer was on the ranch
in 1892. A terrific storm in the spring had been very fatal and most
of the ranchers lost nearly all the calf crop. The Cochrane losses were
light. There was hay in store and a system for dealing with emergencies.
One of the foremen told me that there were 14,000 branded animals on
the range, and he thought there might be a couple of thousand more which
had escaped the branding iron. My sizing up of the situation was that
for three or four winters perhaps the cattle did well on the ranges; the
winter losses were negligible; then came a hard winter, deep snow, intense
cold; the chinook lingered and thousands of beasts perished of cold and
hunger. The cattle would drift as well as they could during the day; lie
down at night; and in the morning numbers were dead. A man told
me that he came on a bunch of sixty skeletons close together. The herd
had camped for the night, and in the morning sixty of them were dead.
Drifting before a storm many would be forced over "cut banks". Shelter-
ing in coulees the snow would drift over them and they would die where
they stood. Sometimes a flood would take its toll. All the early ranges
were stocked from the herds from Montana. Later on young stock were
brought in by rail from the east. These were called "dogies". If they
had to face bad weather before they had learned to "rustle", the poor
stupid things would often simply perish, where the youngsters bred on
the range would not suffer at all. The dogie had perhaps spent his
first winter in an Ontario stable. The range yearling was born and bred
on the range and knew the ropes. What he didn't know his wise old mother
did.
A great deal of English capital was invested in the industry and for
years it seemed to be a fashion in England to send young sprigs of
wealthy families out to ranch. Inexperience and negligence often went
together in these cases. Some of these British ventures may have paid,
but we never noticed any item in the press announcing that they had
declared a dividend. It was not till 1890 that the first train load of cattle
left the west, but carload shipments had been made since 1884. In the fall
of that year 124 head of fat Western cattle were shipped to England from
Montreal. They averaged 1,200 pounds, and fetched three-and-one-half
cents per pound. For some years the cattle boat was, to a very great
degree, a disgrace to the ocean. One turns with disgust from the picture
of starving and freezing cattle on the range, only to be met with the
vision of cattle suffocating, or with broken limbs, on the stormy North
Atlantic. There is no person of feeling who will not be thankful to think
that the big ranch has gone out of existence forever.
The last instance of wholesale loss on the range is that of the Turkey
Track outfit between Swift Current and Wood Mountain. This was as
late as 1905 or 1906. The farther east the weaker the chinook, and this
location was too far east for big ranching. In the same district, and
along the easterly slope of the Cypress Hills, small ranchers who put up
sufficient hay did well. A Dominion surveyor in a report estimated that
the Turkey Track lost twelve thousand head in one winter. The small
rancher who can put up enough hay to feed his cattle in cold spells has
a very pleasant, healthful life. There are winters when he need not
spread a forkful of hay. This leaves him with hay in store which is added
to by fresh stacks every year. Some twenty years ago we were through
the ranching country between Medicine Hat and Cypress Hills. Here
were nice comfortable ranch homes along the creeks and elsewhere, the
rancher perhaps leasing a few sections. It had been a favorable season
and in places the hay on the hill-sides was positively luxuriant, standing
with the hay stems as thick as hairs on a dog. Everybody has read or
heard of the "round-up". I came across what was called the "American
round-up". The Montana ranches were over-stocked and cattle would
come over to the Canadian side. The American ranchers would come over
in October and there would be a general round-up away south of Maple
Creek at which the Americans would pick out their own brands. There
was no corresponding round-up on the American side, as few Canadian
cattle strayed over the line. In return for the courtesy of the Canadians,
when the Americans held their round-up they would note the Canadian
brands and notify the owners. The boys were away riding, but I re-
member the "chuck" (grub) wagon beside a creek, and about 150 spare
horses grazing, with a man riding herd, and quietly circling them as they
fed.
The first compulsory "dip" for mange among cattle was in that same
season, 1904, I think. The photographs on another page or pages will
give an idea of the process. The mange was getting to be quite a scourge
and the government compelled the ranches to "dip" their herds in a warm
chemical solution. A "dip" made of strong lumber, filled with hot solu-
tion, the heat being supplied by a stationary engine, piles of bags con-
taining chemicals and perhaps a couple of thousand head of cattle held
near by, made up quite an interesting picture.
Perhaps the most spectacular thing in the history of the North West
cattle trade goes to Mr. Ed. Fearon, of Maple Creek, who at one time
was the member for the constituency in the Local House. At the time of
the Yukon boom Mr. Fearon took a considerable bunch of beef cattle
into the Yukon, driving them over the White Horse Pass to Dawson City.
It is good to know that his enterprise, courage and resource was not in
vain. Fresh beef was in the nature of a God-send to that mining com-
munity and they gladly paid a dollar a pound for Mr. Fearon's beef,
which seemed to have dropped mysteriously from the clouds. When in
1905 Saskatchewan was erected into a province the number of horned
stock within its borders was about 100,000 much cows and 350,000 of
other cattle. In 1922 there were about 425,000 milch cows and 1,500,000,
of other kinds of cattle.
Bibliography follows:
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