Doc - I have watched the trend for the last 10 years in the black vs red hide issue. It started west of the Missouri river. 10 years ago bull customers of mine in central NE were selling their commercial feeders for the same if not more money than the blacks while here at home there was a 2 to 5 cent difference per pound. Today in my area there is not much difference with quality red calves topping the market from time to time. I don't think the trend has crossed East of the Mississippi river yet but I think it will. Truthfully, the whole black hide thing has been a masterful program laid out by the angus assn. It has enabled people that don't really know cattle to be order buyers for the fact that the mind set was - if they're black they're good. This also explains why so many breeds went black in the last several years when genetically there was no black gene to be found in the purebred animals DNA. In todays commercial market a black hide could be anything - holstein, angus, simmental, gelbvieh, saler, etc, etc. or a combination of any or all of them. I think that this is part of the reason that the color gap is narrowing. A black hide only guarentees that the animal has the domminant black hair gene somewhere in its ancestry. RW