aj said:
JIT....you were accurrate to within a 31% error......made a hell of a story though......steer planet grin. 9.5 divided by 13.8.
I live in the very south part of Saskatchewan close to the Montana/ ND border. The average moisture for most of Saskatchewan is much more than what we get here. If we get 10 inches a year, we think we have had a good year. Of course when the rains come makes a big difference. I have seen pretty decent crops come off here with only 2-3 inches of rain during the growing season. We can get years with much higher precip than what is normal, like 2011, but we can get years that are much below average as well. Last year ( 2012) we had about 4 inches of rain before July 1st and then never had a measureable shower or rain until November. We would have had a disasterous hay and pasture situation if we had not had so much rain the previous year.
This is pretty dry country. I usually put 22-25 pairs per 160 acre pasture of tame grass and oftentimes have to pull some pairs out in late summer so that there will be grass for the rest until fall. I used to lease a 1000 acres of native pasture and I was only allowed to put 23 pairs on it from May 20th and I was supposed to have them off the pasture by mid September. Believe me, that is a pile of fence to check and keep repaired for that few cows. We cut our hay once a year, and oftentimes we have very poor haycrops. In the decade of the 80s, we cut our hay 2 times, and one of those years we only cut it to try to get a few bales to use in the barn. I oftentimes bale 800-1000 acres of hay to get enough for my cow herd. I am very fortunate right now, to have had 5 excellent haycrops in a row so we have a good carry over of feed. Right now, my cows are wintering on hay that is 4-5 years old. I am trying to use up the old stuff before calving .
aj, Mr Google may be close to correct in regards to the average rainfall of Saskatchewan but I guarantee you that parts of this province are much below this. I would expect that the area around the cities of Regina and Saskatoon may get at least 50% more rainfall than we do here.
Saskatchewan is a big province. I am much closer to you aj, than I am to the Northern border of Saskatchewan.