Love of beef industry drives Saskatchewan researcher

Source: Saskatchewan Agriculture and Food

A passion sparked early in life ultimately led Dr. Bart Lardner to become one of Western Canada’s most respected beef researchers.

“I was born and raised in B.C., first in the Okanogan and then in the Peace River area where my father bought a farm,” he said. “We had a hay and beef ranch up there, and that’s really where the bug bit me.”

Lardner didn’t finish high school before he moved out into the industry, working in various ranches and feedlots for the next five to 10 years, and gaining considerable practical experience.

He eventually went back to community college and finished his Grade 12. From there, he completed a two-year diploma course in animal health at Alberta’s Fairview College. In 1984, he came to the University of Saskatchewan, obtaining a Bachelor’s degree, Master’s degree and finally a Ph.D. in 1998. “I got the bug to learn after I had all that practical experience,” Lardner said.

“Growing up on the farm and working at all those jobs showed me that I had a great passion for this industry. I wanted to become an intermediary between the industry, the producers and the researcher; to try to help advance the whole sector through the kind of work I do.”

Lardner is a Senior Research Scientist headquartered at the Western Beef Development Centre (WBDC), a division of the Prairie Agricultural Machinery Institute (PAMI). He works primarily out of the Termuende Research Farm located east of Lanigan, a facility Lardner calls “a laboratory for beef cattle research.”

The focus of his work is applied cow-calf and forage management, “looking at the usage of annual and perennial forages in the management system of the beef cow, both in summer and winter feeding programs.”

In May of 2005, Lardner was named the Chair for Cow-Calf Research and Development under the Strategic Research Program (SRP) administered by Saskatchewan Agriculture and Food.

The position has allowed him to take his work to another level. “I was with WBDC in more of an extension role. Now I’ve migrated to more of a research and extension role,” Lardner said. “The SRP has allowed me to build a very strong program as it relates to the cow-calf sector and the cow-calf industry in Saskatchewan.”

Lardner appreciates every opportunity he has to participate in outreach activities. Never shy about sharing his knowledge with others in the beef industry, he appears frequently as a guest speaker at various conferences.

“I thoroughly enjoy getting out and doing many, many talks, be it to producer audiences, scientific seminars, or even teaching at the university,” he said. “One of the ideal benefits of this position is that extension role, that ability to move the information directly to the industry through speaking engagements and field days and such.”

Most of the research projects Lardner undertakes are directly applicable to the average producer. Among his present activities is finding less expensive and more efficient approaches to the winter feeding of cattle.

“Winter feeding is 60 to 65 per cent of the cost of maintaining a cow every year, and if we can do that cheaper, all the better,” he said. “So we’re currently studying field feeding systems as an alternative to feeding cows in a dry lot or a pen situation.”

The WBDC is also initiating a three-year study to look at the difference between spring calving, which is traditional in the beef industry in Western Canada, and summer calving, which would take place in May or June.

“The idea is to try to have cows calve closer to when pasture quality is the best in that summertime period, and not have them calve in those cold winter months when farmers incur a lot of inconvenience, overhead and facility cost,” Lardner explained.

“So we’re looking at the differences in how we feed the cow or the calf, the cost for each of the two systems, and the effect on the reproductive performance of the beef cow.”

Lardner is very excited about a project on the horizon that ties beef production with one of North America’s fastest growing industries – bioenergy. “There are lots of by-products that are going to be coming from industries like ethanol, and we want to see how they might work into a beef cow feeding program,” he noted.

“So we’ll be starting a study this fall looking at supplementing beef cow winter rations with dry distillers grains. I think they’re going to work very well as an energy protein supplement to a low-quality roughage type of feed, and enable us to winter that cow quite economically.”

For more information, contact:

Dr. Bart Lardner, Senior Research Scientist and SAF Chair for Cow-Calf Research
Western Beef Development Centre
Phone: (306) 682-3139
Cell: (306) 220-9179