Okay, stick with me here.  Have been around cattle my entire life, and there have been cattle on this farm for more than 100 years, so nothing new to me.  My grandfather never purchased a sale barn cow, nor did my Dad.  I got started into my own cattle several years ago by renting a neighboring farm from someone who was hanging it up, and purchased his 15 cattle he had at the time from him, and grew a little at a time by keeping heifers and changing bulls, or swapping bulls with one of my Dad's.  Spare you the long story, many of you know it already, but through settling the estate over last summmer up until now, I'm sitting right around 20 head with room easily for another 20, possibly 30.  I have a budget to work with, and to keep be plain, I'm looking for quantity more than quality as of now.  Not saying I want scrub cows, but the goal here is to buy mid-aged bred cows or pairs, and keep back most of the heifers over the next 2-3 years before taking the cows back to the barn to try and recoup a little of their cost, while getting decent heifers to put on a couple nice reg. hereford bulls. My only stipulation is that the cows need to be black, as I'm trying to shift into bwf calves, and still have about 6 cross red cows hanging around that I will replace the same way.  For the money, I see I can maximize the head for the buck at the sales, but why do people put bred cows in the sale?  Are there reasons other than the reason I almost did it last week?  I've got two red cows that are just out of this world skittish, and have gotten tired of dealing with fighting getting them up to be worked and whatnot, and thought the next time I could catch them to where I could pen em up, I'd let them ride.  I failed to get them up a couple weeks ago and they both calved this weekend, so in hindsight, glad I didn't get them sold, but it'll be the same thing this fall when I wean the calves, I'll be ready to let them ride and they'll be bred again.  Getting the age to them, so they need to go but anyway.  I know there's the occasional sell-off or retirement, but aren't the majority of sale barn bred cows going to be someone else's problem, or are there some winning shots there?  There are some within reasonable distance on craigslist and facebook pages and such, but then I'm piecing them together 2,3 or maybe 4 at a time and I don't really want to do that either.  I would rather buy them in one or two shots and be done with it, but I'm looking for input from experience here, of which I have none on bred cows at a sale barn.  Here's what went last week locally. 


Bred Cows                  Medium and Large 1 - 2 Young
Head   Wt Range   Avg Wt    Price Range   Avg Price
    1   1305-1305  1305           1875.00    1875.00   Per Head  7-9 Months Bred
                            Medium and Large 1 - 2 Middle Aged
    5   1041-1175  1068     885.00-940.00     897.10   Per Head  4-6 Months Bred
    7   1232-1362  1273    975.00-1240.00    1036.22   Per Head  4-6 Months Bred
    1   1575-1575  1575           1110.00    1110.00   Per Head  4-6 Months Bred
    3   1080-1130  1113     740.00-890.00     841.50   Per Head  7-9 Months Bred
    1   1265-1265  1265        980.00         980.00   Per Head  7-9 Months Bred
                            Medium and Large 1 - 2 Aged
    3   1183-1183  1183        910.00         910.00   Per Head  1-3 Months Bred
    2   1105-1105  1105        910.00         910.00   Per Head  4-6 Months Bred
    3   1210-1210  1210        990.00         990.00   Per Head  4-6 Months Bred
    1   1150-1150  1150        820.00         820.00   Per Head  7-9 Months Bred
    1   1270-1270  1270           1225.00    1225.00   Per Head  7-9 Months Bred
                            Small and Medium 1 - 2 Middle Aged
    3   1003-1003  1003        980.00         980.00   Per Head  4-6 Months Bred
                            Small and Medium 1 - 2 Aged
    2   1025-1025  1025        790.00         790.00   Per Head  4-6 Months Bred
                            Small 1 - 2 Young
    1    995-995    995           1375.00    1375.00   Per Head  1-3 Months Bred
    7    905-995    949   1525.00-2000.00    1783.60   Per Head  7-9 Months Bred
    3    948-948    948        990.00         990.00   Per Head  7-9 Months Bred
                            Small 1 - 2 Aged
    1    850-850    850        675.00         675.00   Per Head  4-6 Months Bred
                            Small 2 -3 Young
    1    830-830    830        800.00         800.00   Per Head  1-3 Months Bred
    1    650-650    650        740.00         740.00   Per Head  4-6 Months Bred
    1    600-600    600        680.00         680.00   Per Head  7-9 Months Bred