Charolais Connection • March 2015 21

Kerry Fahlman may have madehis money in the service

industry of the oil business, but hisheart has always been in the cowbusiness. He was raised in Griffin,Saskatchewan, with baseball andpurebred Angus cows. Kerry grewup being very active in sports but thefarm just wasn’t big enough foreveryone. He left to work as a welderin the oilfields of Alberta in 1974. Hestarted his own business and a familyin the Medicine Hat area. As we weredoing this interview, a SaskatchewanRoughrider game was playing in thebackground and Kerry explained hestill takes his Rider cup to the coffeeshop every morning. Some parts ofhis Saskatchewan roots still remain.

A member of the Soo Line BoxingClub in Weyburn growing up, Kerrywas the Western Canadian Championand won a bronze medal at CanadaWinter Games in 1975. He wasranked third in Canada as a middleweight. When he moved he was stilltraining out of a guy’s basement inMedicine Hat until he started aboxing club that is still running. He

was a Boxing Alberta Director ofCoaching for 5 years and is headcoach in Medicine Hat. “No one elsewants to travel with the team and it ishard to keep competitors if you don’ttravel,” Kerry explains. “Normallywe have 15-20 members in the club,with eight or nine serious about thesport. I became an official to Level 4

of 5 levels after I quit boxing. I wasthe most qualified official in Albertafor a few years and did quite a bit ofofficiating in the eighties. Then whenour son Kody started competing, Igave that up and just kept coaching.”

Kerry and Sandy have raised afamily of five children, all veryinvolved in sports. At one point,

Profile ~ Fahlman Cattle Co. Candace By

Sage, Chad, Sandy, Kerry, Tyler, Kody and Skye Fahlman

Sandy was in California for avolleyball event and Kerry was inIreland for boxing. They were verybusy going many directions at thesame time. Hockey took them toomany places to mention. Now theytravel to watch Skye play hockeyfor the Red DeerCollege team. Kody went thelongest in boxing,achieving the rankof third in Canadafor three years as aheavy weight.

Kerry alsovolunteered as a 4-H leader for 7 years and servedon the 4-H DistrictCouncil. Now heserves as the chairman of theSoutheast Livestock FeedersAssociation.

Kerry works as a consultant in theindustry, as a liaison between thecontractor and the land owner wherepower lines are being built insouthern Alberta. It is a job he enjoysas he gets to look after the land andunderstands the importance ofprotecting the environment. “Thesepeople just don’t know you can’tclean up ruts in native grass.” Itallows him to share his passion andconnection to the land in a role ofpositive stewardship.

In the eighties, he started buyingcattle while keeping them at otherplaces. In the beginning he onlybought yearlings so never had toworry about wintering anything. Inthe nineties he started buying cowsand keeping some of his own cattleand really got into the cattle business.They had a closed black herd ofAngus at that time. “Black got to beso popular, that Angus breedersstarted to keep everything instead ofculling. They had the market to selland sold everything they could. Ourweaning weight started to drop but itmight have been because we had aclosed herd. With mid-April calvingwe were getting weaning weights of625 lb. and they had dropped downto 550 on steers in a few years and we

never changed anything. We neededthat first cross, it just wasn’t workingfor us, we sell pounds of beef. So Istarted to investigate cross-breedingwith Hereford or Charolais. I talkedto the feedlots and they were

impressed with theway the silvers feed,the heifers werefeeding the same asthe steers. Icontacted ourbuyers to see if theywould bid on silversand they were reallypumped about it.Now Porter andMcLean has boughtour calves two yearsin a row and theyare pretty happywith them. I also ran

into Gerry Bowes, the Charolaisfieldman, at the market and had a bigvisit about the industry before the PBar 3 sale and he helped convince meit was the thing to do.”

“We bought our first ten Charolaisbulls from P Bar 3 at their dispersaland three from the Bar Punchdispersal held in conjunction with it.We gathered up a couple of othergroups and started the first year with26 Charolais bulls. Now we are up to42 Charolais bulls. We select bulls

with an 85-95 pound birthweight tobreed our cows which are between1400-1500 pounds.”

“The first calving season with someCharolais sired calves was in thespring of 2013 with four feet of heavysnowfall and serious windchill. Wewere trying to bring in 800 cows atnight in corrals and just didn’t havethe shelter we needed. That is all we

Coach Kerry with three belt winners

continued on page 24

The Grand Champion Female purchased at the Regina Winter Fair in 1963, left to right: Donald Fahlman (Kerry’s father), Holly (sister), Kerry, Memory (sister), Gary Pettit (cousin),

Art Beach (breeder) and the herdsman

� I talked to the

feedlots and they

were impressed with

the way the silvers

feed, the heifers

were feeding the

same as the steers.�

22 Charolais Connection • March 2015

continued on page 2624 Charolais Connection • March 2015

could handle in the corrals. We hadsix people working around the clock.We went through 600 round strawbales that spring. We couldn’t pushsnow anymore, we had to blow thesnow and put straw out, only to turnaround and do it all again the nextday. We tried to keep an area clear tocalve in but it was an uphill battle.We did it virtually every daythroughout calving for almost amonth. We lostsome calves andwe had some largecalves. DNAtesting showedthat it was in thecows and wecouldn’t blame iton the bulls. Foryears we had beenkeeping ourbiggest heifers asreplacements andthe birth weighthad to have beenmostly from them.Every bull wetested had one largecalf and only a couple had two bigbirth weight calves. Only half of theherd was our breeding program. Therest of them were from reputationherds at dispersals.”

“We had cows calve and just walkaway from their calves. It was self-preservation. We lost 125 calves and30 cows in that brutal spring and

they were in good shape going intothe winter. We weren’t alone and weweren’t the worst hit in that difficultspring, but we didn’t want to gothrough that again. We backed offthe calving season a bit to the end ofApril to avoid the late winter storms.Calving went considerably better this year.

We also changed the feed ration.We feed tested and tested the water

and found weweren’t lacking inany minerals.When the cowswere grazing onfree choice, juststanding aroundeating, the calvesgot bigger thanthey should have,so we changed ourfeed ration. Wefeed 20 lb. of hay,10 lb. of straw and10 lb. of rolledbarley and naturalkelate minerals. We

try to graze intoNovember and feel it makes adifference when the cows are movingaround grazing. We mouthedeverything and culled 200 cows onfeet, bags, teeth, late breeding anddry cows. Some just didn’t breedback after the tough winter. We keptthe younger end of the cows that losttheir calves because it really wasn’ttheir fault. We kept the bulls out alittle longer because the calf priceswere so good. We normally leave thebulls out 60-70 days and try to keep abull for every 20 cows. So we hadsome late calves that were onlyaround 350 lb. at weaning, but thisyear that was still $1200. We willwork on tightening the calvinginterval back to where we want it.”

“We ultrasound a week afterweaning. New cows in the herd getIBR if we don’t know anything aboutthem. We try not to needle anything,only as a last resort. The calves getnasal pneumonia spray at birth andVitamin E. We have a healthprotocol, but we try to raise healthycattle with stamina that don’t need alot of attention.”

�We lost some

calves and we had

some large calves.

DNA testing showed

that it was in

the cows and we

couldn’t blame it

on the bulls.�

26 Charolais Connection • March 2015

“The weaning weights have come upconsiderably by crossbreeding withCharolais. The first year they weren’tsorted separate from the Angus calves,so we weren’t sure what we gained inweaning. We had no rattails.”

This past September, Kerry wasnervous about the market and put hiscalf crop out for tender for November10th delivery.The bids on the calvescame based on pictures.The steers werecontracted for $2.9425/lb for 550 weightsand heifers at $2.95/lb for 500 weightswith a .0035 slide to the order buyingfirm of Porter and McLean LivestockManagement Inc.

“We had 850 to calve last spring andhave expanded to 900 cows this year,after culling 200 cows in 2013.This pastfall we did get some black heifersbought and some good older blackbaldie cows. Breeding Charolais, I amprepared to buy my own replacements,although I may just breed these baldiesI just bought to Angus and raise someof my own. I bought 75 baldies at theOne-Four Research Herd dispersal afew years ago, but there were about 350more 1400-1450 pound straight blackcows and should have bought more.”

He has 200 cows in Alberta on fifteenquarters of deeded grassland and 300acres of irrigation. They could keepmore cows in this space, but it wouldrequire more help. The majority of thecowherd is kept on share arrangementsin Saskatchewan. They put up 4000bales and buy the grain they require forfeed. “We would like to get up to 1500cows and keep leasing or renting land ifwe can get more.

Sandy & Kerry Fahlman

conclusion on page 28

28 Charolais Connection • March 2015

� The weaning

weights have come

up considerably

by crossbreeding

with Charolais.�

This year we are doing a lot moregrazing on rented grass with grainpellets spread on top of processedgrass-alfalfa mix along with free choice mineral.”

“We want all black or black baldiecows and are considering supplyingreplacements for our Saskatchewanherd out of our Alberta herd. I found agood set of Herefords cows, and planto breed them Angus to produce myown replacements. I prefer black on

Hereford as opposed to Hereford onAngus cows. It would be nice to buythem all locally according to where theyare going to be kept. Avoiding theadjustment time to get into peakproduction would be optimum.”

The cattle business is always alearning process and being adaptable isnecessary. Kerry has proven that beingadaptable can also be profitable andswitching to Charolais bulls on hisblack cows has proven to be just that.

Left: Charolaisbulls going outfor the first timewith the herd