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COUNTRY LIFE IN BC • AUGUST 2017 Wildfire destroys Ashcroft dairy, feedlot


Rebuild plans already in the works


by DAVID SCHMIDT


ASHCROFT – Rob Donaldson Jr vows to rebuild after a wildfire destroyed his organic dairy and feedlot in Ashcroft.


One of several hundred


wildfires burning across BC in early July, the Ashcroft fire started on the CP Rail track on the Ashcroft reserve, a half kilometre from Bradner R Farms on July 9. “By 11:30 am [on July 10],


the fire got quite a bit bigger and started climbing up the mountain,” Donaldson recalls. “When it came over the hill, we had about 30-40 minutes to get the cattle out of the barn.”


returned to the barn during the fire,” he explains. Another half dozen cows


were euthanized after arriving in Bradner as the injuries they sustained in the fire proved too severe for them to survive. Although Donaldson’s milk


A farmworker surveys the incinerated remains of a two-year-old dairy barn in Ashcroft after wildfire decimated it on July 9. Dairy farmer Rob Donaldson Jr vows to rebuild. ANITA BATHE/CBC PHOTO


That was enough time to get all 200


milk cows and 100 calves and heifers out. Next, Donaldson opened up all the corrals in the feedlot, allowing the 1,500 heifers, dry cows and beef animals to escape the fire. After releasing all the animals, Donaldson had to evacuate for “a few hours.” When he returned, he found the fire had destroyed his three-year- old robotic dairy barn and most of his


corrals. Fortunately, a couple of pens in the


feedlot had been spared. With the help of friends and neighbours, he was able to round up the animals and use the remaining pens to sort them. Beef cattle, dry cows and heifers were hauled to another feedlot the Donaldson family owns in the Ashcroft area while the dairy cows were trucked to his father’s farm in


Bradner. Donaldson says the help he


received was invaluable, noting “we had people showing up out of the blue.”


Amazingly, Donaldson lost only five


cows in the fire. “Because we have robotic milkers,


cows are trained to come back to the barn from the fields for water and to be milked and we believe the cows


cows have temporarily joined his father’s 200-cow milking herd in Bradner, the younger Donaldson plans to move his animals to a vacant dairy farm his father owns on Barnston Island while the farm in Ashcroft is rebuilt. “We are already meeting with dealers and going forward on the rebuild. Whether we build another robotic barn or go to another design depends on the insurance, which we are still sorting out,” Donaldson said just three days after the devastating fire. The barns are not the only losses Donaldson incurred. The fire also destroyed all of Donaldson’s irrigation pumps


and took out four kilometres of power lines serving the farm. “We also expect to lose several


hundred acres of alfalfa and fields of corn,” he says. Donaldson isn’t deterred by the


setback. He believes he can have the feedlot back in operation by the fall and expects to be back milking cows in Ashcroft within 18 months.


Checkup


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