bryan6807
Well-known member
I recently attended The Jones Show cattle High Standards sale and I was impressed by the set of cattle they had to offer. I thought the bred females were a little fat, but overall a nice set. I know beef prices are high, I am just wondering how you tap into that currency. Their sale avg. was over 10k/head. It took a at least $3100 to even get one bought. I have a set of females that are pretty solid and I can hardly give them away. Where is all the money coming from that somebody can drop 30k, 40k, and even 70k on a heifer calf? I understand they are reputable breeders and have had a lot of success in the show ring. I also know that I am only using their sale as a example, but I have even followed a lot of the online sales and I have a have a hard time believing there is that much money in the show cattle industry. We had a monopoly steer we tried to push hard 3 summers ago, said he had state fair potential and nobody even came to look, he was priced at $2000 all summer, ended up selling him for just over $1600 and he ended up being the Reserve Chi Steer at the 2013 Indiana State fair. How is it some guys get $3000 for a so so calf?
So a lot of guys bid up calves to a huge price and then sells it to aa reputal person they know well for a average price. But next year they will promote well hey this is a full sib to that 50,000 calf from last year. I saw pics of a calf that sold at a sale in my state and I would say he was a 1750 maybe a $2000 calf, it sold for like $7750 or so and the girl who shows for the people bought it. Now do you really think it sold for $7750? The next thing you have to watch is online sales. I just saw a sale that is around today tomorrow or tuesday with some animals in it. The same bidder bidded on every single animal in there but one. Please tell me they arent running the bids. So first thing is, you have to be able to weed through the smoke screen. Secondly a lot of farmers have 20-50 cows. Market prices are up like you said. They also creates more revenue for farmers to spend to buy cows so take that into consideration. We do not have a lot of cows. We got good ones though. We bought a show heifer for almost $5000 this september, and bid on 2 cows in Jones sale and ran them up to $5000. But we also took a bull calf to the stocksale in august. It weighed 560 and we got $2.51 a pound. Make a long story short, we made a lot of money just off our throw aways this year. So we had more money to play with this year. Our program has had some success. I will tell you this, the more shows you go to, the more honest you are to people, and the more you're in the backdrop, the more traffic you will have at your place. We have been focusing on not how much we sell our calves for, but to who we sell them too. Get your calves in the right homes, let them win a few times and you're going to make more money down the road. Advertising is where its at. I have sold more calves off of Facebook then I have anywhere because of people being able to see it. Lastly, always remember you have to spend money to make money. But a lot of people spending big money on calves, also pay a lot of monthly bills as well because they're in debt up to their eyeballs. I would be willing to bet a lot of money, very very very few calves besides ones sold at cyclone trace, griswold, sullivans, and even jones actually sell for more than $25,000. There is a hand full that do, but a lot of those $50,000 ones are said to be sold for that, but only maybe $7500-$10000 is truly spent.
