Market Report
April 1, 2024
It isn’t easy to produce a market report when the numbers are so low but let’s start with cows and bulls. Real good cows up to $125. Just good bulls at between $120 and $138 but it’s early yet to have the real good bulls. No real test on feeder cattle but lots of demand.
- We have been doing research on the health issues of the cattle we sell. For years we have taken a calf off the coast one added value to them when others dock the prices for coast cattle. There are 2 critical issues here. The first is 2 words BUNK BROKE. Cattle that get here on Saturday have the best chance of getting bunk broke by the time they leave here Monday night. It would be hard to express the value in animal health of all calves that leave here bunk broke for a feed lot destination. In the few days calves are here they become familiar with water tanks, feed wagons, chopped hay, and eating out of bunks like they see when they get to the feed lots. Our information goes a long way to proving just how important these issues have been to cattle we have sold in the past and will continue to sell in the future. When you combine animal care with the right feed and facility you start to create a really good product headed to the feed lots. It’s taken years of work to get a lot of customers on the same page when it comes to vaccinations, and other animal health issues, but they surely works. These calves are worth more, they bring more and, in order to continue producing a better product we continue to make changes in just what we are doing here to add value to the cattle you sell.
This year we will continue to commingle cattle with like vaccinations because it adds real value to the cattle you sell. However, we will only be commingling cattle that come here on Friday and before noon Saturday. This decision has been made because it’s an animal health issue, we know what works and we want load lots of cattle to leave here with a chance to do good for the buyer. That is in everyone’s best interest in the long run. So, if you show up here with 10 light steers on Sunday night, we will be selling them as a lot on Monday NOT commingled. However, if you get those same cattle by noon on Saturday, we will be adding them to other cattle and selling them in load lots. We are going to continue to improve the reputation of coast calves handled and properly vaccinated this is just another step in that direction.
The real value over the last 3 years has been in program cattle. These cattle continue to bring big premiums over commercial cattle. Last year the price for these cattle sold in our special sale brought around $40/100 over the prices paid for commercial cattle statewide. The number has gotten too large to ignore. We will continue to commingle these cattle and require all these cattle sold as NHTC program cattle to come here Friday or before noon Saturday. There can be no exceptions to this requirement. In the past we have made exceptions but our research on all animal health issues has us coming to the conclusion the time cattle get here is a critical part of overall animal health issues. We have been able to access these markets when others can’t so it’s vital to the success of that new market, we see they get these cattle in as good as condition as we can provide. We built this facility in 1991 and at that time we addressed some of these critical issues from experience. Today because we have great records with the help of EID tags and good customer records, we understand more how critical a great facility means to animal health.
Don’t forget the special sale on the 15th. If you have replacement heifers that did not breed back, we are commingling these heifers to sell in load lots. So even if you have a few it will be a great time to sell them. Some might have cows that are open at the same time, and we will have customers for feeder cows also so another good time to sell open cows.
831-320-3698.
Jim