A local cattle producer and entrepreneur says the loss of Western Feedlot will be felt.

Wade Nelson says big feedlots work on volume.

"A place like High River Western (Feedlot) you couldn't run half the cattle in the feedlot because your costs are the same for things like staff, feed mill and feed trucks and all that equipment so you've either got to have 30,000 in the lot or you've got to have zero, " Nelson says.

He says it's one less buyer at the auction market and that's never a good thing.

But it's not just cattle producers who'll be affected.

"It's going to be a lot of barley that's not going to end up there that would have normally on a yearly basis, and a lot of straw, so farmers that may have sold a B-train or two to Western, well, that's not going to happen anymore," he says.

Nelson says he hasn't known a time in his life when Western Feedlot wasn't right across the river from where he lives and raises cattle.

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