In my area this time of year when everyone is scrambling to find feeder calves for the year we always get into the debate of what is the best way to sell your calves. Just getting my herd size built up and will have several calves for sale next year and I am already trying to figure out the best way to try and get my calves sold the fairest way and also most profitable for me. I was curious how all of you Steer Planeters do it.
I have some buddies that just price all of their calves and start letting people come walk their pastures and picking them out. He seems to have pretty good luck doing it this way but it always seems that someone thinks that they should get to pick before others because they have been buying there for years. So to solve this problem does any of you set some kind of pecking order for your repeat customers to get to pick their claves out first or do you do it on a first come first serve basis. By doing it first come first serve it seems like every year people are coming out earlier and earlier tring to get the first pick.
The other way was having a sale and setting base prices on each calf and having people put in bids with the bids closing at a certain time and then having to go back and call each bidder. I have another buddy that does it this way and the past couple years he seems to have plenty of people that bid but he has had trouble collecting the money and also has had people that bid on and got calves that when he calls them back to notify them they got it they say to let the back bidder have it. This seems like it can be more of a hassle at times.
So looking for some ideas! Also what are some good ways to promote your calves you have for sale. We have a couple sold this year and also will be showing a couple so I was thinking maybe hats, shirts, stall signs with our farm name.
Sorry for the long post, but any help is appriciated!
I have some buddies that just price all of their calves and start letting people come walk their pastures and picking them out. He seems to have pretty good luck doing it this way but it always seems that someone thinks that they should get to pick before others because they have been buying there for years. So to solve this problem does any of you set some kind of pecking order for your repeat customers to get to pick their claves out first or do you do it on a first come first serve basis. By doing it first come first serve it seems like every year people are coming out earlier and earlier tring to get the first pick.
The other way was having a sale and setting base prices on each calf and having people put in bids with the bids closing at a certain time and then having to go back and call each bidder. I have another buddy that does it this way and the past couple years he seems to have plenty of people that bid but he has had trouble collecting the money and also has had people that bid on and got calves that when he calls them back to notify them they got it they say to let the back bidder have it. This seems like it can be more of a hassle at times.
So looking for some ideas! Also what are some good ways to promote your calves you have for sale. We have a couple sold this year and also will be showing a couple so I was thinking maybe hats, shirts, stall signs with our farm name.
Sorry for the long post, but any help is appriciated!
