You never know when a disaster may hit your farm, so it's best to always be prepared. This means having a plan in advance for your family, as well as your livestock.

Brad Andres, Emergency Program Manger with Alberta Agriculture and Rural Development says the first thing you need to do is look at the risks for your farm in particular. There can be potential risks of flooding, grass fires, forest fires or there could be a pipeline that runs through the farm that could rupture. Once you've established what you need to prepare for, you must make a plan.

Andres says when you are in an emergency situation you don't always think rationally, so if you have everything planned out ahead of time it will really help. "So know things like where your fuel and chemicals are stored, so if there is a fire you can advise the first responders or you know what areas to avoid, because the chemicals and fuel will cause all sorts of problems in that situation."

Once you have your plan Andres says you need to start on your emergency kit. "In the personal or family emergency kit you need to have things like food or water for three days, a manual can opener, flash lights, battery power or wind up radios so you can hear emergency broadcasts, first aid kits and those types of things," he explains.

"Specifically for farms you need to have identification of the animals and an inventory. Especially if you are going to leave them behind or evacuate them to a common holding area, you need to know which ones are yours," Andres says. "You need to have ear tags, brands, pictures, all of those types of things are really important to separate your animals from everyone else's who have been evacuated." He says you also need to have animals handling tools, and three days of food and water for the animals as well.

When it comes down to the emergency, you have three options with your livestock. "You can shelter in place the animals, so if it's flooding or there is a wildfire, you can either shelter them in place and try to ride it out, or you can try to evacuate but that may or may not be possible depending on the size of the farm, and the number of animals and types of animals you've got. Finally you can open the gates and let the animals look after themselves, and do the best they can in the circumstance either to find high ground to avoid the flooding, or to get away from any fire," Andres explains.

In the end you have to react to the situation by using the plan you developed and using your common sense.