Don’t know about other regions of the country, but here in the northeast, flax, alfalfa pellets and cubes, and wood pellets and shavings for bedding come from Canada.
38 Likes
With flax prices all over the place the past several years, I can’t help but wonder if there isn’t a better alternative…
I love my flax but I feel like I’m spinning a roulette wheel anymore every few months when I make a purchase.
8 Likes
Well and there will be other challenges. Our hay supplier beefed pretty hard about fertilizer prices when the Ukraine thing happened, so hay might go up, again. There’s almost no product now that is 100% local. It’ll hurt for awhile.
8 Likes
Owning a horse just gets more unappealing by the day for me. Can’t wait to burn more of my money.
8 Likes
Most oats are Canadian sourced as well.
Are we winning yet?
23 Likes
Potash (for fertilizer) comes from Canada. Also gas, oil, steel, wood and aluminum, Just the raw materials we use for every damn thing we do. One of Musk’s old friends who has disavowed him said that he bought the US govt (for $250M) to further his goal of being the first trillionaire in history. So yay? I guess we can all donate to that cause whether we want to or not.
30 Likes
I’m in the southwest, and even our shavings and wood pellet bedding comes all the way from Canada. If there is a domestic source, I haven’t found it yet.
But the American public-- that would be us-- “will understand.” Or so we’ve been told. 
Speaking for myself, no I will not. I will not understand why or how this is a good thing.
36 Likes
I’ve wondered what’s going to skyrocket when. I am not a great strategist, when covid hit it never occurred to me to by zoom stock, ya know?
I feel more like I know a tsunami is coming, I just can’t see the water receding.
18 Likes
Awww Schucks wimmen,
Just cuz Leon predicted,
“There will be hardships, economic turmoil and the stock market will crash”. You all
Are still clutching your pretty little pearls.
Lighten up!
7 Likes
Sadly, (for the big picture, not for any individual that gets hit), many will be delayed by Canuck companies shouldering the burden as long as they can, moving business south of the border, etc.
It was good I was driving very slowly on an icy back road when I heard a bunch of interviews describing the above. If I had been at more than a crawl my arm gestures and shriek of, “THIS IS NOT THE TIME TO BE NICE, FFS! STOP BEING SORRY FOR SOMEONE ELSE’S LUNACY!” would have probably caused an accident.
Anyway, bye bye North American economy. It was kinda ok knowing you … and I’m guessing we’ll find out just how ok it was over the coming months and years.
20 Likes
I wondered about horse purchases: will tariffs affect the price of horses? I’m ignorant on import/export fees. Of course, feed grains and wood products are a huge import from Canada. Building anything just got more expensive here in America. I’m sure Canada and Mexico will retaliate, which doesn’t actually help either country. Sigh… I wanted to retire in four years.
Without making this political, hopefully in 2 years we’ll see some changes back to a more stable, trade agreement based economy between the nations on the continent.
12 Likes
I’ve been wondering the same thing. I was exploring the idea of importing from Canada but I worry I’ll have to hold out for a while longer…
2 Likes
I had planned to build a hay storage area…. I’m not optimistic it will be affordable now.
8 Likes
My usual flax source is on back order (
) so I grabbed a bag of Triple Crown from TSC…over $50 for a 25lb bag ().
Wave goodbye to the middle class and the economy. Many people I know personally and LOTS of people online are collectively scaling back to buying only what they truly need. Some because they can’t afford not to, and others in solidarity. This will not be without consequences.
20 Likes
My horses are on a track system so I’m not using shavings (maybe a couple bags a year). Feed and hay prices worry me. Right now the hay guy is selling me his discount bales (opened strings, mild water damage that you can flake off, newly wet hay that is okay if fed immediately). There’s only so much cutting back I can do. I look for coupons to save on feed.
As soon as I saw fertilizer on the list of impacts I knew hay would go up. The question is how much will it go up?
9 Likes
We had a local company try to make pellets but they couldn’t swing it. I always thought it was mainly because they chose to use poor quality forage as their starting point- they were unrolling large rounds for the pellets. But I suspect there are other obstacles here such as our humidity. We can grow great alfalfa but the stars have to align to get it in the barn.
3 Likes
Huh?
1 Like
So if Canada and Mexico shouldn’t retaliate…just roll over and accept the 25% tariff from trump, say ok yes sir, what do you think Canada and Mexico should do? I tend to stand up to bullies.
19 Likes
I believe the /s was implied.
7 Likes
@Pippigirl
I just meant that a tariff war hurts everyone-- and the US has no reason to start one for such spurious reasons with our USMCA in place already with CA/MX. I feel for CA/MX being caught up in the stupidity.
I worry about this crashing everyone’s economies, and turning the incredible recovery from Covid backward. I guess it’s time to tighten our collective belts and think about how to make horsekeeping more economical. As if that’s a thing!
24 Likes
