Blog Archive October 2012
Jeff Wake up, this might actually be something useful to a few of you...
Sure, real life auctioneers will roll their eyes and the rest of the barn will laugh at you if you try to bid $5,001 when the current bid is $5,000.
Online? Skin that smoke wagon and see what happens.
What are the most common ‘off lot’ bid prices?
First, I’m sure auctioneers have some derogatory slang for this type of bids but I’ll define an off bid as a bid outside the normal $50 increments. $4,501 would be a $1 ‘off’ bid. $10,003 would be a $3 ‘off’ bid. $1,054 would be a $4 ‘off’ bid.
Secondly, the dataset will be the now 1,841 steers sold online so far this fall because I know they were all sold in similar auction formats.
So what have been the most successful ‘off’ bids?
$1 – 46$2 – 5$3 – 5$4 – 0$5 – 12$6 – 2$7 – 0$8 – 0$9 – 1$10 – 5$11 - 0$12 - 0$13 - 0$14 - 0$15 - 2
Beyond that, there’s just a few random numbers other than $25.
Yes, right at 1 in 40 steers sold online this fall have been bought using that my bid + $1 trick.
So, what do you bid if you want to be sneaky?
If it were me, I’d bid $11 more than the maximum I’m willing to pay. That would undercut the sneaky snakes winning auctions by bidding $1 more than their maximum and the rest of the really sneaky snakes that go $2-10 more.
Don't forget you have to do that with an earlier bid. Most sales won't allow you to bump the price by just $1 for very legitimate reasons. However, you can bump by $111.
Of course, now the other guy bids $12 more than his max and the other guy bids $13 more…..
Urine in the Sample
I don’t know why we even waste time getting our exotic bull fertility tested each year. He’s now failed 3 out of 5 tests since 2009. We’re also having an average of two calves a day out of him every day right now.
The S.O.B. keeps pissing in the sample and everything looks dead. Last year after he did it we took him to another vet right away and they got an excellent sample from him. I don’t know if he’s just ‘clogged up’ each fall after six-months of rest or what.
If one of you bull guys knows what to do in such situations (the bull sired 20 calves after he tested bad in 2010 and about twice that after doing it last year) other than running him with 3-4 open cows to get the pipes moving, I’d love to hear your suggestions.
Friday Night
I made a lot larger drunk a-hole out of myself on Twitter than I did in real life where I was actually quite cordial.
You Guys
...know I'm not going to approve those comments on that one post right? I just don't want to get drug any further into that stuff.
Dan Sullivan Dispersal
The barn was packed for the Bar A dispersal on Sunday afternoon.
The sale average on the pairs was around $5,800-6,000. I say somewhere “around” there because I didn’t differentiate between what was listed as a pair in the catalog vs what was only a bred. When we left half way through the sale I thought the average was in the $8,000 range.
Other People’s Cattle and Drought
Have you ever noticed that the only cattle you give an excuse for being a notch or two low on body condition score after an extreme drought are your own? It’s been an issue at the big female sales in Texas/Oklahoma this year and I know I’m guilty of it.
Not to Go All Misogynist On You
…but it's almost an absolute rule that if a sale allows for color variation (Simmental, Shorthorn, club calf, etc.) and there are two women in a bidding battle, the cow they are bidding on is not a solid black and has an attractive color pattern.
Stop shaking your head, you know I’m right.
Top individual sale lots of the past week...
- $49,001 - Steer sired by Heat Wave
- $30,000 - Pair sired by Angus
- $23,500 - Pair sired by Angus
- $22,000 - Heifer sired by Werewolf
- $21,500 - Pair sired by Polar Express
- $18,500 - Heifer sired by Tiger Woods
- $17,500 - Steer sired by Monopoly
- $17,000 - Heifer sired by Immortal
- $16,500 - Pair sired by Heat Wave
- $14,250 - Steer sired by Walks Alone
Total blog posts found by our blog spider since September 2009. Prior to that the posting level was a fairly constant 50 or less per month.
We recently passed up the 60,000 lots mark in our database of online sale results.
After looking at just the sale data for this fall, I've come to realize that not a single person in the mid-west has ever sold a show steer out of a clean up bull.
Habeger's blew the previous top averaging steer sale out of the water with their sale last night...
...including a new top seller.
I'd do a viral ad that's put on Youtube videos and perhaps one of the RFD show animal shows.
It'd start with a kid throwing his horse brush and scotch comb on the show box as he rushes out of the barn for the night and turns the lights off. Then some "bow chicka bow wow" music would play.
Then cut to the next morning where the kid comes back and finds a wizard comb.
If Kris Black’s fall bull sale is as close as you can get to a southern style bull version of Denver (which in my opinion it is) Douget’s fall sale is now the American bull version. For the second year in a row, a bull has gone for $20k+ destined for club calf production.
Hercules crosses that line between club calves (ABCs and Brangus) and purebred seedstock better than just about any bull outside of Irish Whiskey in his heyday.
Fort the first time, I’ve dropped a blog from the blog roll. From time to time blogs have gone offline for a variety of reasons, none of them intentional. This time, it’s intentional.
When so many different Ol’Roys (my new name for a variety of people that don’t exist, never talked to me, and that you don’t know, I super duper promise) have sent me one too many stories of a wide array of issues with the owner of one blog to keep sending 13,000 visitors a year.
Top individual sale lots of the past week...
- $27,500 - Heifer sired by No Spin Zone
- $19,000 - Heifer sired by Ali
- $12,000 - Steer sired by Monopoly
- $9,500 - Steer sired by Monopoly
- $8,000 - Heifer sired by Purple Eclipse
- $7,750 - Heifer sired by TH 122 71I Victor 719T
- $7,500 - Steer sired by Heat Wave 5
- $7,000 - Heifer sired by Ali
- $6,250 - Heifer sired by Strictly Business son
- $5,500 - Heifer sired by Irish Whiskey
When people search bull names they tend to overwhelmingly search for “[name] bull”. The results they get, at least for clubby bulls, tends to bounce around between us, Steerplanet, BullBarn, and TopSires.
What I found interesting last night while doing anything I could to avoid working on moving Trophyhorse.com over to a new layout was just how well the amount of searches for bull names correlates with the volume of their calves this fall.
Google searches for each bull (searches had the word bull at the end)
- I-80 – 480
- Monpoly – 260
- Heat Wave – 210
- Eye Candy – 210
- Walks Alone – 170
- Bojo – 140
- Amen – 110
- Believe in Me - 110
- Unstoppable – 73
In fact, when you compare that to the steer sale report, it’s just about the same thing with two exceptions. One Bodacious was just thrown out because of the rodeo bull. Secondly, the only bull that’s way out of whack between where he ranks for sale volume this fall and the amount of searches being done on his name is I-80.
Early signal for trends? Heck if I know.
I know some of you don’t care for this stat stuff but I’ve been programming pretty solidly all month and it’s either numbers or nothing from me right now. Today it’s stats on the individual sale high selling steers this fall.
Of the 150 online sales that have had steers since August 1st the average high seller was $7,123.
There were 59 different bulls (throwing the clones in with the originals) that sired the high seller in those 150 sales. The bulls that sired the most individual sale high sellers…
- Monopoly - 58
- Heat Wave - 20
- Walks Alone - 9
- Eye Candy - 8
- Bojo - 4
- Friction - 3
- I-80 - 3
- Salty Dog - 3
- Unstoppable - 2
Thriller - 2
Jakes Proud Jazz - 2
Bodacious - 2
Headliner - 2
My Turn - 2
Northern Improvement 4480 GF - 2
Smilin Bob - 2
Choppin Wood - 2
The over represented sires on that list are...
Monopoly sired 21.3% of all steers in the database this fall but had the high seller in 32.7% of sales.
Heat Wave sired 8.2% of the steers in the database this fall but had the high seller in 12.7% of sales.
Walks Alone and Eye Candy both sired a relatively predictable amount of high sellers based on the amount of steers they had in sales.
Top individual sale lots of the past week...
- $21,000 - Heifer sired by Monopoly
- $17,000 - Steer sired by Monopoly
- $11,503 - Heifer sired by Thriller
- $10,600 - Heifer sired by Fast Freddy
- $10,250 - Steer sired by Heat Wave
- $10,000 - Steer sired by Eye Candy
- $9,500 - Steer sired by Eye Candy
- $9,100 - Steer sired by Heat Wave
- $8,950 - Heifer sired by Inidian Outlaw
- $7,750 - Steer sired by Unstoppable
1 - Daily web summaries are now deleted after a week. They're really only useful the next day so it's not a big deal.
2 - I deleted that calf rescue video because it was messing with the alignment causing the stuff to the right to drop to the bottom of the page.
After the addition of the results from Ak-Sar-Ben, Keystone, Tulsa State Fair, and the State Fair of Texas…
- Texas A&M – 1.458
- Oklahoma State – 1.454
- Iowa State – 1.439
- Colorado State – 1.410 (5)
- Western Illinois – 1.443 (4)
- Texas Tech – 1.398
- Kansas State – 1.395
- West Texas A&M – 1.358 (9)
- University of Illinois – 1.357 (8)
- Ohio State – 1.355 (nr)
Texas A&M maintains the #1 spot but OSU closed the gap with a win at the Tulsa State Fair. Colorado State, West Texas A&M, and Ohio State all moved up with contest wins.
*Only a team’s top seven finishes since after last year's NAILE are taken into consideration.
Step 1 – Buy a slab of fajitas that is drastically thicker on one end than the other.
Step 2 – Cook the fajitas based on how well they are done on the thin end but eat the thick end.
Step 3 – Poop. A lot. Repeat for several days.
Step 4 – Three IV bags at the doctor’s office that are out of your system by the next morning.
BAM – You just lost ten pounds in a week.
Try it at your own risk, I'm not a doctor.
Top individual sale lots of the past week...
- $50,500 - Heifer sired by Chopper
- $30,000 - Heifer sired by X301 HR
- $18,500 - Heifer sired by Unforgiven
- $14,500 - Bull sired by Monopoly
- $14,000 - Heifer sired by SLC Sooner 101M
- $11,500 - Heifer sired by Driver
- $11,500 - Steer sired by Walks Alone
- $10,000 - Heifer sired by Monopoly
- $8,500 - Heifer sired by Hairy
- $8,100 - Heifer sired by Monopoly
What words are used most often to describe lots in Maxanet style online sales?
Based on just under 50,000 words in the descriptions of cattle, semen, and embryo sales currently up on the Maxanet accounts of BWOS or CW...
The words "cow", "bull", "steer", "heifer", and "one" as well as common English words were removed.
You know those guys that tell you that there's still a strong market for the top end steers but nobody is going to pay for that bottom half? They're correct of the former and wrong on the later. Steer prospect prices are up across the board, generally up 20% for the top half and 10% for the bottom half.
There's obviously a bit of bias in that steers that end up in online sales are already sorted out a bit from the generic calf for sale on any give place. If you've looked at enough sales, I think you'll tend to agree that the quality seems go all the way from the bottom to the top.
| 2011 | 2012 | Change | |
| Lots Counted | 692 | 938 | |
| Median Price | $2,000 | $2,250 | +13% |
| Average Price | $2,953 | $3,452 | +17% |
| 95th | $7,750 | $9,262 | +20% |
| 90th | $5,705 | $6,750 | +18% |
| 80th | $3,750 | $4,500 | +20% |
| 70th | $2,755 | $3,500 | +27% |
| 60th | $2,400 | $2,750 | +15% |
| 50th | $2,000 | $2,250 | +13% |
| 40th | $1,800 | $1,980 | +10% |
| 30th | $1,500 | $1,700 | +13% |
| 20th | $1,300 | $1,400 | +8% |
| 10th | $1,100 | $1,200 | +9% |
Past Posts
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