How do you decide which calves get sold?

Jill said:

I am pretty much in agreement with AAOK, you have to decide if you want to be a seller or a shower and then the rest is easy. 
Every calf at our house has a price, we will sell anything, but the ones we would like to keep we put a price on that the purchaser would have to want the calf worse than we want to show it.  At our house a really good bred and owned has a high price tag, we have won the National Jr. Maine Steer Show twice with bred and owned calves and that is just incredible fun, in both cases after the show those calves were sold, so we got to have our cake and eat it too, double fun!

From a buyer perspective, there have been people that try and sell calves to us that don't show their own and you have to wonder if they aren't good enough for them to show, why are they good enough for me. 

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I look at it differently as a breeder who only shows at open shows. I see it as if a calf we raised wins we win because people see that we will part with our best and will want to come buy from us since they realize we aren't keeping something back that might beat them someday. Why would I want to buy something from somebody who is keeping something that could beat me for their own kid to show. If they didn't sell their best you would never beat them(in theory), so why give them money to come in second place to an animal they won't sell. Think of all the shows the Stewart boys could have won through the years but Greg wouldn't let them because he knew if people thought he kept the very best for his own kids people wouldn't buy calves from him. Jill, if Gregg would have kept the steer your nephew won the State Fair with for Brig to show would you guys have still bought a steer from MCF or would you have gone somewhere else to get a steer knowing there was nothing at MCF to beat the one they kept?

We usually set a predetermined price that we feel we can't turn down if its offered.  If someone offers us over that price the animal is gone, no one gets to complain, and we show something else.  My girls are so limited by other activities that we don't feel we can turn down good money just to show at a few shows.  Besides, as many others have  said, we also feel that if our customer wins--we win.  Also, usually when we refuse to sell an animal for good money we live to regret it later because an unforseen problem occurs.  We've had two heifers that we didn't sell when we were offered very good money--one never grew as well as we thought she would and  never settled and the other turned out to be a chronic bloater.  We ended up selling both these "irreplaceable" heifers for market price.

We have also had customers beat us with calves from bred cows and heifers we sold them--in fact, it may happen again this year.  We usually put prices on around 75% of our herd and sell down to the number of females we want to keep.  We then keep what's left and many times still end up with the best calves on the ground.  We really take that as a complement for our program because our focus has always been to keep improving the females in our herd.  If I can't really pick favorites from those we've offered for sale, I guess I think that's a good thing!!  I wouldn't take back any of our past sales opportunities(even if the calf later beat us) and we almost always have a good market for any breds we have for sale. 

itk said:

Jill, if Gregg would have kept the steer your nephew won the State Fair with for Brig to show would you guys have still bought a steer from MCF or would you have gone somewhere else to get a steer knowing there was nothing at MCF to beat the one they kept?

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Ok, I'm going to hijack the thread here for a second, I apologize in advance.  You know that is a funny example, we had never shown a steer prior to that one, we had always made the kids show heifers because steers are such a dead end project.  We think the world of Stewarts and have always gone to the sale but had never bought a steer, that was Tony's last year in 4-H so we decided we would look, but weren't going crazy.  That steer was in our top 4 or 5 and assumed he would be way out of our price range, we paid 3300 for him while everything on either side of him was 8-10, it was just one of those flukey deals, he didn't show much early because we couldn't get him broke, he had actually gone up on Tony's back and we decided not to mess with him and then all of a sudden one day he calmed down, to make a long story short, it had a very happy ending, thanks for the memory.

I do understand what you are saying, Gregg has until the past couple of years had his kids show the left overs and I commend him for being able to do that, at the same time I don't think it has hurt his sales to let his kids show either, Tucker has gotten to show some very good ones in the past couple of years.
Mike Hartman is another one that always held his resolve, his kids never showed Maine's because that was his business, they showed Shorthorns instead and competed at the top without causing any hard feelings for his customers.