KY | 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
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