Selcting Sale Cattle

[petejc72]

I am on a sale committee for a well established purebred consignment sale out West.  For the last few years the sale has paid several thousand dollars for someone to go around to the consignors ranches and "select" cattle.  I am trying to convince the rest of the committee this is not necessary since people already know what they want to consign and this is a waste of money.  If this person truly was selecting cattle every year there wouldn't be 4-6 head in our sale that are not up to the standard of the other cattle.  My question to ya'll would be do any other consignment sales you know of have someone travel around "selecting" the sale cattle?? 

 

[ROAD WARRIOR]

I have been involved with similar sales and their selection committees. The problem I run into is that even though you drive several hundred or even thousands of miles and hand select animals from breeders, by the time the sale date comes around many of the animals you selected have either already been sold or the breeder has decided to retain them in their herd so they send you a substitution lot in their place. This basically defeats the purpose of the selection committee and it ends up being a waste of time and money. I personally preferr a sifting committee that sifts the animals after they arrive, but you have to have people on it that are not afraid to step on some toes. RW

 

[justintime]

This is a debate that has been going on for decades... and maybe since consignment sales started. I have been on several selection committees over the years, and I tend to agree with RW. There are definite positives and negatives to either method of selection. I have always thought that the buying public usually are a pretty good selection committee, but that is not always in the best interest of the sale.

While I agree with having a sifting committee at the sale, it can create for some very hard feelings if someone has brought their consignment several hundred miles, and then are told they cannot put it in the sale. The worst case of this I have seen happened a few years ago, when a breeder brought a bull over 1500 miles and was then told he could not sell him. Needless to say, he was not a happy camper. I guess it would have been better if he had been told he could not consign this bull before he put all the work into getting him there along with the feed involved.

I have also seen selection work in reverse, where the person selecting the cattle picks cattle the owner does not think are good enough or does not want to sell. I have had this happen on a couple of occasions where the sale selector has picked some animals that I did not think were worthy of going into this sale. It turned out I was proven to be right, but it is hard to change someone's mind sometimes.

It can also be a benefit for a sale manager to see what he has to work with months prior to the sale. A few years ago, I was contacted by a sales manager and he said that he wanted me just to pick out what I thought would be best for the sale. He said that he was not going to be able to get to our place on his selection tour, so I should just pick out my own entries. I told him that I would prefer it if he could see them, and he did come a couple weeks later, when he was travelling near here on his way to a sale. He fell in love with a heifer calf I had and he said he was very glad he had stopped. He said he thought she was the best heifer he had seen all year, and he went to work immediately and we ended up getting $8000 for her, as well as $6500 for another heifer. This may have happened anyways, but this was one case where I thought the sales manager actually did his work properly.

So... the debate goes on, but with rising travel costs, and the costs involved with being away from home, it is very questionable whether sale selection pays for itself.It is extremely hard to see all the cattle for some of the larger national sales as there can be thousands of miles involved.

 

[petejc72]

Thanks for taking time to give your thoughts on this justintime and RW