Alberta Beef Magazine - BeefNews.com

Risking the dream by Bonnie Warnyca
December, 2009

As a kid growing up on a small dairy farm in Switzerland, Armin Mueller fantasized about some day raising buffalo that were so much a part of the popular North American western movie culture.

Today, under the name of Pilatus Farms near Bentley, Alberta, Mueller and his wife Rita not only raise bison (buffalo), but is a partner in a multi livestock slaughter and processing plant (Canadian Premium Meats) at Lacombe and operates Canadian Rangeland Bison Inc., a marketing firm for both bison and elk.

Looking back
Mueller immigrated to Canada in 1975 with just $130 in his jeans and the promise of a job on a Quebec dairy farm. By 1979, he had moved to Alberta, purchased 45 dairy cows and a small farm near Bentley. In 2000, almost 22 years later, he decided maybe the time was right to resurrect his long held fascination with the North American bison. He sold his 245 head dairy herd and quota and jumped into the bison business buying 1,000 head from a cross section of Canadian bison breeders.

"There was a lot of hype in the bison industry at the time," reflects Mueller. "The prices were high but so was the enthusiasm. I soon got caught up in the quest to put bison meat on the North American menu. I bought roughly 300 cows and the rest included some breeding bulls and feeders. We put up a lot of high wire fence and felt the momentum for this market would just continue to build. We couldn't foresee the many challenges ahead."

Welcome to the protein business
In 2002, there was a terrible drought in this part of Alberta. In 2003, BSE shut the door on both beef and bison shipments to the U.S. The bison industry fought hard to get the same amount of federal assistance as their beef counterparts, but it took more than a year to get a much smaller percentage. "With the help of the lower Canadian dollar, we had a growing American market at the time," says Mueller. "We were also opening up new European markets in both Switzerland and Germany. Several bison producers had put together the Canadian Rangeland Bison Inc. by that time and I was a major shareholder. After blowing roughly $2 million dollars within 20 months, the company was close to bankruptcy. We needed a marketer for our product, so I took over the company. Little did I know it at the time, but the company was a whole lot of nothing. I was soon to quickly learn the art of marketing."

Could anything else go wrong?
In 2005, the Edmonton packing plant burned down leaving Mueller and Canadian Rangeland Bison Inc. without a federally inspected, EU certified plant to process the bison. They were able to process some in Fort McLeod, but the nearly $400 fee per animal kicked the legs out from under their business plan. "We were dealing with our competitors and they didn't make it easy for us," says a feisty sounding Mueller. "We couldn't process our animals in a timely manner and it was just too expensive. They finally stopped processing our animals altogether, and because we were desperate, we trucked our finished animals all the way to Kamloops, B.C. We had to try to keep our North American customers supplied once the border opened to UTM animals. We were only doing about 80 head a month, but we didn't want to lose our hard fought customer base."

While good bison bulls will finish between 24 and 28 months of age, that still leaves about fifty percent of the production which finishes over the thirty months. To finish the rest of the feeders properly you want them to grow to 1150 to 1200 lbs live weight on a bull and 950 lbs for a live heifer. A good bull will yield between 56 and 58 percent. Trucking live bison through the mountains and then trucking the meat back to Alberta wasn't a long term solution.

By 2005, Mueller had had enough trying to rely on others to process the bison. He sweet talked two of his Swiss born pals to partner in a slaughter and processing facility to be built at Lacombe. "We opened the doors of Canadian Premium Meats Inc., a multi livestock, custom operation two and half years ago," he says. "It took more than a few drinks to convince my partners Yvo Schmucki and Werner Siegrist to go along with this. We actually came in under budget and built the plant for $7.5 Million. My partners run the day-to-day operation while I look after my animals and run the marketing company."

Mueller buys roughly 2,000 feeders or finished animals a year from about 40 different bison suppliers. Some producers have only a handful of animals for sale, while others have much larger herds. Last spring good carcasses brought $2.75 hot hanging which was an all time high and this fall it's decreased to about $2.50 a lbs. For the time being, the breeding market is in a slump and good breeding stock is butchered for a higher return.

Things are turning around... slowly
"We now have customers in the Middle East, the U.S., Dubai, Switzerland, Germany and Egypt," says a more upbeat Mueller. "We bought into a consortium called Prairie Halal Meats and that seems to be helping sales. We are currently working on a new strategy to increase our domestic market. But without new breeders or increasing the size of the current herds, we may not be able to continue to grow our markets because of undersupply."

Mueller has increased his own herd numbers to 2,000 head including roughly 450 cows. "We've culled heavily over the past nine years," he says. "We expect a 450 lb calf or a calf that weighs roughly 45 percent of the cow's weight. We don't keep animals with pinkeye, or animals that don't gain well. We've also culled a lot of the older animals. I believe that we're in a good position to take advantage of the growing health conscious consumer population whether here in Canada, or out-of-county."

Industry Question

Are you optimistic about the outlook for our cattle industry in the coming year?