For the most part, it was a mild winter, and although spring has been a little chilly, it was still fairly good for the calving season!  In Manitoba, March weather can be very unpredictable and you can sometimes experience the good and bad several times a week. 

"We're right in the middle of calving season right now and the reports coming in from everybody is that they're having pretty good luck calving and the general consensus is that calves seem to be a little bigger this year than they have been other years," shares Executive Administrative for the Manitoba Livestock Marketing Association, Rick Wright.

"And these calves are going to be worth a lot of money in the fall, barring a major black swan event such as a border closure or something like BSE popping up," he adds.

Wright says the MLMA expects the cattle market to remain strong, "of course, it's going to follow the grain prices and they're talking about drought in some of the areas, but the grain has actually been going down. It hasn't been going up.  We import a lot of feed from the US and as long as they can grow it down there and have the surplus then we'll be able to import it and get it to the feedlots here."

At the recent cattle auction at Virden's Heartland Livestock, just over 3100 cattle went through the gate as 17 auctioneers from across Manitoba and Saskatchewan competed in the ManSask Auctioneer Championships.   Wright says the cattle prices were very healthy, prices he hadn't seen before.

He notes it has been a pretty good start this spring season for cattle producers across the province.