Greybeard, I can agree and disagree with your comments on "every animal at an auction is not a cull." Yes, it may not meet my highest expectations so is a "cull" from my herd as far as a breeder....but then again, we are cow/calf, and we cannot even begin to raise all our good heifers as replacements since we would run out of room in 2 years. That said, we are in the business to sell feeders, and cannot afford to keep many of the good heifers. Especially like this fall when we have a calf crop of over 75% heifers much to our dismay.
One of the reasons we sell at the auction is to get a check that day once they are sold. What they see is what they get, no guarantees.
Have been there, done that, with selling privately and had them not have enough money on the day they came to get the animal, have had bad checks from some people you would never have expected it from, you name it. Plus the ones that come back 3 or 6 months later and complain that this is wrong or that is wrong or they thought this. This after having some written sales agreements too. If we were selling purebred breeding stock then it would be different, but just to sell commercial animals, the auction is the better place around here.
So many times buying at auction is not the worst way to go if you have some knowledge of what you are doing. Agree that it is not for the unknowing, but it is buyer beware.
That said, we have several guys that will come up to us, and ask if we brought animals in when they see us, because they have bought some of our calves in the past and have said that they did real good for them. And this past fall early fall we did sell a big group of light weight (450) steers to a guy who said he would rather buy direct, so they don't have to go through the sale and get exposed to everything there, and we weighed and delivered to him, local, and they wrote a check right there and it was a good deal. Hope to do the same this next year, but won't have near as many, again since we had so many heifers born.
We never buy an open cow at a sale, unless she has a calf by her side. And after years of buying some bred heifers here and there, DO NOT buy any bred heifers anymore. We have a neighbor and friend who breeds and sells bred heifers ever fall, usually about 75 - 100. He is also cow/calf, and mostly keeps his heifers and then sells breds. Has good commercial cattle. And we still don't buy bred heifers. First off we have our own; second, if I am going to buy breds, they are going to be cows that have some idea of what they are doing. And we do buy bred cows; mostly at dispersals, but also some odd ones here and there that we think we can make a few dollars on down the road. Especially in the current market with some bringing not alot over cull price. Again, you have to know something of what you are doing....we often buy older cows, some with maybe a year or two left in them and have made a bit over the years. Lost a few too, but you can lose a 2000 heifer too.
We went through the learning curve, and still don't always get it right every time now, but we are still in it....
