Blog Archive December 2011

I’m fairly confident that 2011 was the first year that you could go to Youtube, put in the right search terms, and instantly find video of any cow on any ranch in the entire United States.

The 38 cattle oriented channels we monitor posted a total of 1,309 videos in 2010 and they were viewed 389,416 times.

2011?

7,418 videos (an increase of about 450%) and they were viewed 1,693,677 times (an increase of about 325%).

35 of the 38 videos from Denver that Ideal Video did last year would rank on this list if we did the apples to oranges comparison of views on this site to Youtube video views.  However, the tracking is done differently, so a straight comparison would be misleading at best.

It's interesting to see that if you have Brad Hook doing your video and something goes wrong, you are almost guaranteed to have a viral (by the standards of this little niche) video.

So, after pointing out that the best video on the list is #18, the most viewed videos from cattle oriented Youtube channels during 2011...

Rank	Video	Info	Views
1		Ft Worth Final Drive Brad Hook B.S. 2/6/2011	5,419
2		Angus Bull Show National Western Stock Show 2011 Angus Productions 1/7/2011	5,250
3		2011 Source For Success Online Sale Lot 7 Maximum Exposure 9/25/2011	3,725
4		Open Heifer Show National Western Stock Show 2011 Angus Productions 1/14/2011	3,528
5		I Am Angus - CJ Hadley, Range Magazine Angus Productions 2/28/2011	3,475
6		Bull Snort Brad Hook B.S. 2/10/2011	3,385
7		Purina's 60 Day See the Difference Challenge Purina Mills TV 2/22/2011	3,199
8		Moving Cattle Collins Cattle Service 5/21/2011	2,923
9		2011 Cardinal Cattle Company Diamond in the Mine Sale Lot 5 Maximum Exposure 10/3/2011	2,512
10		Angus Junior Show National Western Stock Show 2011 Angus Productions 1/13/2011	2,442
11		Angus Cattle History: Grand Champion Steer 1941 Chicago Angus Productions 5/27/2011	2,426
12		2 MUCH Help,,,,DOG Gone It. Brad Hook B.S. 2/18/2011	2,314
13		Capatske Cattle Co. Online Club Calf Sale 09/17/11 Tag 3 Maximum Exposure 9/9/2011	2,227
14		Larrison Farms Online Sale | TAG 78 Maximum Exposure 8/31/2011	2,221
15		Sure Champ - Gilt Show - Oklahoma Youth Expo Angus Productions 3/14/2011	2,157
16		I Am Angus - WA McHenry and Earl Marshall Angus Productions 2/28/2011	2,123
17		LW 14 breedersworld lot 3 Southern Ohio Sale 8/21/2011	2,037
18		~45lb girl stops 1300lb steer and keeps on showing Cattle.com 2/14/2011	2,021
19		Vickland Show Cattle Online Sale Tag 12 Maximum Exposure 8/30/2011	1,984
20		American Royal - Jr. Market Steer Show Grand Drive Brought to you by Sullivan Supply on MLC TV Matt Lautner Cattle 10/22/2011	1,983
21		trauschtag1 BWOS Cattle 12/2/2011	1,962
22		I Am Angus - Temple Grandin on Animal Welfare Angus Productions 2/28/2011	1,941
23		Lot 1 KrisBlack 2011 Collins Cattle Service 10/22/2011	1,877
24		TAG 5 | 2011 Habeger Online Sale Maximum Exposure 10/5/2011	1,859
25		maytag18 BWOS Cattle 11/6/2011	1,837

Internet Competence

It was just two years ago that just having a blog meant you were pretty far ahead of the game as far as the club calf world goes.

Now?

Everybody who is anybody has at least two out of four from blogs, Youtube channels, Twitter accounts, or a Facebook page.  A good portion of the big boys, that just a few years ago looked down on all of this web foolishness, have all four.  Everyone keeps track of Steerplanet and has a username ready.

The INTERACTIVE web and social media presence is no longer just something that so-and-so does because he doesn’t have time to do anything else.  It’s now something everyone does because everything else depends on it.

Show Broadcasting

Shows have been broadcast for quite some time now, this trend is nothing new.  I know DVAuction, Cattle in Motion, and Liveauctions have been doing it for quite some time.

What's changed is it’s hit a tipping/saturation point now where major shows are now expected to do it and it’s weird if you don’t (hello San Antonio).

The tipping point has been a switch from sporadic broadcasting of a show here and a show there to a continued effort by operations like CIM and MLC.tv to turn it into a profit center through the sale of highly targetted advertising.

And yes, major shows are starting to become selective about who they let broadcast.  Like broadcasts of sporting events, major shows have come to realize that their broadcasting partner impacts their brand and they are choosing them accordingly.

The Liveauctions.tv sales have been dropped from our online sale calendar for no reason other than our spider is currently being blocked by their main page from retrieving sale info.

No blog post today.

Just a comment on how nice it is to sit here in the home office working with a slight hint of a runners high while listening to my highly trained Pandora station that's only interrupted by the frequent high pitched joyous squeals of Tessa playing with Luke in the other room.

Merry Christmas.

Is there anything more likely to cause the death of a calf than a leg back?

Not at our place, that's for sure.

We've lost four calves out of the ~110 that have calved so far this year and three of the four were calves that had a leg back.  All three of them were dead by the time we went in.

Really neat pic from their Facbook page this morning...

"2012 New Bull Line-up sneakpreview they're a must see!!!!!!"

Ten most viewed videos from Denver 2011...

1. Believe in Me - 4,887
2. Monopoly Money - 4,688
3. Bodacious - 4,619
4. Heater from Vanmeter - 4,169
5. Moonshine - 3,572
6. Pooh Bear - 3,210
7. Long Time Coming - 3,052
8. Damn Proud - 3,040
9. The Gambler - 2,709
10. Warfare - 2,676

After a few year of having the site footer show up in the wrong spot for Firefox but correctly for IE and Chrome, I was finally given the solution.

I had to add "clear:both;" to the .footer class.

This is the first in eight ‘year in review’ type posts to finish out the next two weeks.

Our visitor count this year was up 62.4% over 2010, thanks primarily to a bump of 70% in our Google referrals.  For some unknown stupid reason, I take a bit of pride in the amount of traffic we send out to other sites and like to brag about it.

Not counting the ‘daily web summary’ posts or the Lautner Farms ads that are on a large portion of the site….

Since January 1st, we have sent 226,573 visitors to 2,288 different web sites/pages.  The top ten…

1. Matt Lautner Cattle – 56,836
2. Brad Hook B.S. – 23,248
3. Diamond G Cattle – 15,012
4. Rodgers Cattle – 13,800
5. Trausch Farms – 12,234
6. Lautner Farms – 12,017 (+ the ad)
7. Mittag Show Cattle – 10,440
8. Holtkamp – 6,643
9. Fry Cattle – 5,837
10. Executive Sires – 4,984
    

1. Cattle Today Sites - 23.09% (2)
2. Cattle.com - 15.57% (3)
3. Cattlerange.com - 13.46% (4)
4. CattleNetwork.com - 12.85% (1)
5. Beefmagazine.com - 12.03%
6. Steerplanet.com - 8.73% (7)
7. Showsteers.com - 8.48% (6)
8. Cattlepages.com - 1.65%
9. Clubcalves.com - 1.18%
10. Mattlautnercattle.com - 0.65% (nr)
    

I've added a couple other Angus sites to the breed association category. Really, it's just another way to show just how absolutely dominant Angus is.

Interestingly, it's almost the exact same as last year at this time.

Originally developed for myself to I could quickly calculate this stuff, I've polished it up just a touch and put it on the public site.

This tool allows you to enter a target breeding date, select from about a dozen different protocol options, and then quickly display a schedule for all shots, CIDRs, and heat checking.

It can be found via http://www.cattle.com/ai

AI Synchronization Scheduler

Update: The errors prior to 8AM were due to the fact that you people didn't put a date in.  I've fixed it to work with that and just pick a date two weeks in advance if none is selected.  The reason it was fixed at 8AM and not 6AM is Jack is becoming a little pain the butt about 4:30AM.

No blog posts because I'm working on an AI synchronization scheduling tool that we'll launch tomorrow.

Hardest thing to find online in a while.  They're out of stock or on long term back order at 7 of the 8 sites I checked. 

8 because I stopped looking when I found some.

I use this site in much the same way you do, to see just how bad my grammar is and find information I don’t know about.  Virtually everything on here is based on automated bots that check for new and updated information but I have to train the bots to go out and find that information first.

I honestly cannot think of any type of information we intentionally leave off of the site because of where it came from.  The only type of information sent to us that doesn’t get listed has been individual animal sale reports and that’s because we require complete sale reports.

So, you know something that’s not on Cattle.com but should be, what do you do?

Recently Updated Sites

If your site is not updating on the recently updated sites page (which receives between 150 and 300 visitors per day) there are several options as long as your site is in html.

1 – Submit it yourself on THIS PAGE.  Something additional you can do is submit each page of your site.  The spider only checks the front page right now so submitting each page of your site will make sure those pages show up in the list if they are updated.

2 – If you have a long list of sites you manage, e-mail me at jeff@cattle.com with the URL of the page.  It may take a few days but we’ll setup a spider to check it regularly for updates and add them to the list.

If your site is dynamic in ASP, PHP, etc. the spider doesn’t currently have the ability to check for updates but we plan to do so in the next month or two.

Directory

Submit your information here.

AI Bulls

Send the info to jeff@cattle.com or use our online tool by CLICKING HERE.

AI Bull Suppliers

The bull suppliers listed are all there for free and all checked automatically.  If you’d like us to check your site for prices, e-mail me.

Online Cattle Sales on Calendar

If you manage one of the 250 online cattle sale services and your sales are not showing up on our calendar page, just send me a link to a page where you list all of your sales to jeff@cattle.com and we’ll start checking the page.

This too is something that is automated.  If you change the layout of your upcoming sale page, it will typically knock your sales off of the calendar because of the way we check for them.  If that happens, let me know and we’ll fix it.

Youtube Videos

If you have a Youtube channel, send it to jeff@cattle.com and it will start showing up in our daily web summaries and Youtube video stats.

Blog

If you have a blog hosted on Blogger or has a feed on Feedburner, send us the information and it will start showing up in the blog roll to the right and the daily web summaries.

Listing Entire Catalog

This is the only thing we charge for.  You can cross list your entire online sale catalog on Cattle.com, have a link appear on the front page at the top of the right hand column, and have each of your calves show up on the AI sire page for the relevant bull for $100.  Just contact me at jeff@cattle.com to list it.

**Updated with info from the Rodgers Cattle Youtube channel that was launched in October and hadn't been added to our list of channels we check.

Based on what I’ve been told in person, I should just start putting a return address on and stamp on these video ranking posts since I’m really just mailing it in.

In my defense, I’m lazy.

The list is topped by the $50,000 heifer from the Bob May sale and NAILE grand drive by Matt Lautner Cattle TV which are both essentially tied.

Rank	Video	Info	Views
1		maytag18 BWOS Cattle 11/6/2011	1,837
2		NAILE - Grand Champion Steer Drive Brought to You By Sullivan Supply Matt Lautner Cattle 11/12/2011	1,823
3		65 Rodgers Cattle 11/15/2011	1,770
4		maytag2 BWOS Cattle 11/6/2011	1,624
5		Windy City Fall Classic Online Club Calf Sale Tag 66 Maximum Exposure 11/1/2011	1,507
6		53 Rodgers Cattle 11/15/2011	1,503
7		70 Rodgers Cattle 11/15/2011	1,225
8		Zing Elliot Cattle Company 11/19/2011	1,208
9		maytag8 BWOS Cattle 11/6/2011	1,202
10		maytag17 BWOS Cattle 11/6/2011	1,176
11		56 Rodgers Cattle 11/15/2011	1,168
12		Woltemath and Dickinson 1 BWOS Cattle 11/7/2011	1,156
13		Purple Reign Tag 700 Maximum Exposure 11/27/2011	1,147
14		JT Weber Family Online Club Calf Sale || Tag 1 Maximum Exposure 11/9/2011	1,143
15		Tag 15 Goretska Show Steers 11/15/2011	1,137
16		Sink or Swim Online Heifer Sale Tag 2 Maximum Exposure 11/16/2011	1,123
17		60 Rodgers Cattle 11/15/2011	1,115
18		webstertag20 BWOS Cattle 11/7/2011	1,098
19		Purple Reign Brandy Maximum Exposure 11/27/2011	1,087
20		Wagner Tag 3 Maximum Exposure 11/7/2011	1,085
21		68 Rodgers Cattle 11/15/2011	1,076
22		webstertaghereford BWOS Cattle 11/7/2011	1,075
23		Windy City Fall Classic Online Club Calf Sale Tag 57 Maximum Exposure 11/1/2011	1,052
24		Woltemath and Dickinson 6 BWOS Cattle 11/7/2011	1,034
25		maytag5 BWOS Cattle 11/6/2011	1,025

For all intents and purposes, the fall sale season has come to an end. The jocks have moved on to finding babies and hard doing spring borns to fleece Texans on and the bull guys are getting ready for Denver. So, what does a steer cost in 2011?

After 1,800 steers sold in 158 sales this fall, the average price of show steer prospects sold online is almost exactly the same as last year at $3,032 vs $3,043 for last year.

I'm going to take a brief moment to pat Katie, who does the data entry, and myself on the back.  That is quite a bit of data to process.  It's just that you, well, we feel like you take us for granted sometimes.  I know you don't really take us for granted but it would be nice if you said it every now and then.  Would it be too much to ask you to just take us out for dinner some time?  It doesn't have to be anythi...wait...calm down...don't get so defensive.  Forget it.  Just forget I said anything.

The median price has remained the same as well at $2,000.

Monopoly, Heat Wave, Bojo, and My Turn are the only four bulls that ranked in the top ten for both average price and sale volume.

Walks Alone missed the top ten for average price by about $100 but was a very solid #3 in volume behind the big two.

I get asked quite about the basics of how to go look at the bulls in Denver so here’s my annual blog post.  Honestly, if it weren’t for the bull videos, I’d make a day trip out of it because both of the local county shows we care about have their shows that weekend every year.

I want to stress again that it’s time to go if you can.  The Yards are easily some of the most run down facilities in the nation.  They’re hands down the most nostalgic facilities anywhere and they simply ooze tradition and history when you see them.  You will have missed out if you didn’t go the National Western while it was held there.

What Days?

January 13th and 14th will be the big days if you want to see the clubby bulls.

Through 2010, Herd Bull Alley was quite literally a pile of dust on Sunday morning.  Last year was the first year the NWSS told bull owners to have their bulls out on Sunday and the cooperation was a bit mixed.  I know most of the bulls Phil Lautner hauled were up but it was pretty hit and miss on the rest.

To put it in perspective, we don’t have the cameras out Sunday.  I’d assume the ball is rolling on it becoming a bigger deal with more of the bulls out but I wouldn’t want to plan my trip around it yet.

What Time?

Bulls get up and going anywhere from 9AM to Noon.  They’re not all up at the same time and the alleys can get quite crowded during the peak times.  Just plan on walking around a lot looking at bulls and catching them as they come through.

What Sales?

The Embryos on Snow is on Friday night and is held off site in a hotel.  I went the first two years and it was an absolute mad house.  It’s supposedly an invitation only thing now but who are we kidding, you can’t afford those embryos anyway.

The big Maine Anjou sale is on Saturday afternoon at 3PM.  The auction barn is big but it will be impossible to get in about 3PM.  If you want a seat you’ll need to get there at least 1-2 hours in advance.

Immediately following the Maine sale is the Western Elite sale.  It’s just as crowded.

The Chi sale is on Sunday.  The seats are still full but it's not nearly the mad house it is the night before.

note: I really worded that wrong before.  It wasn't intentional, just late night writing.

What Hotel?

I’ve sworn by Embassy Suites since long long ago when I worked for a living and the FAA/DoD guys made sure to stay there because they were the nicest hotel that still honored a per diem rate.  It’s got large rooms that could theoretically sleep three couples (two queens in one room and the fold out couch in the other), includes a free all you can eat breakfast, and importantly a two hour happy hour with free drinks each night.

Quite a few ‘name’ guys stay at the Embassy Suites in Aurora and that’s where I stayed until last year.  That particular Embassy Suites also has a free shuttle to the NWSS but the fight to get on it is a pain.

Now that I make sure to go on Thursday night, the Aurora one is booked up by the Angus and Hereford guys.  We stayed downtown last year and while they’re not nearly as accommodating to us hicks (I don’t think they wanted us tracking manure into their new hotel) it’s still very nice.  It’s also a solid $40+/night cheaper but it’s downtown with no shuttle.

Flight

If there’s a direct flight to anywhere from your airport, there’s a direct flight to Denver.  It’s a hub for Frontier and that keeps the prices down for both them and other airlines.

Parking

We’ve been able to find parking extremely close to The Yards for about $20.

Admission

If you are just going to The Yards, it’s actually free to get in.  To go up on the hill where the show ring is, you do have to buy a badge or daily ticket.

What do those Zip Ties Mean?

Different color zip ties on the halter are for hill or yard cattle.

I don’t need to get you riled up over the new Department of Labor’s proposed revisions to child labor regulations.  If you have e-mail or Facebook you’ve already been beaten over the head with it.  I'm a bit surprised it's taken this long for the uproar to really start, it seems like I got an e-mail on it from a political activist organization a few weeks ago.

If you haven't seen it, just do a quick browse of Google News on the subject.

I will point out that 90% of the e-mails I’ve gotten or Facebook status’s I’ve read have claimed that people won’t be able to have their kids help them on the farm.  Even most “news” articles on the subject look at it from the perspective of famers no longer being able to have their kids work for them.  That’s just not true.  The proposed changes have been very specific in their exemption of working for your parents.  I realize it’s e-mail and Facebook but there’s no need to lie to make a point.

Of course, the fact that they provide an exemption for kids working for their parents is typical of government regulation.  If the law is supposedly meant to protect kids, that shoots the idea to hell.  Working for a farmer who knew what the word safety was outside the context of “disable that safety device” would have been ten times safer than working for my dad (who BTW, almost managed to run over himself with the 4430 for a second time).

My opinion?  Eh, whatever, good luck enforcing it.  You folks in the government can’t even come close to getting farmers to stop hiring undocumented workers.  What in the world makes you think you’ll be able to stop a 14-year old from working the summer for his neighbor?

If you have to ask somebody what to flush a cow to, you shouldn't be flushing her.