Limousinlive.com
If I were devloping a breed specific portal, this is what it would look like...
A straight forward no-nonsense site focused on content. I'm a big fan of the integration of video and how well it was put in without taking away from the rest of the site.
That doesn't even start to cover the actual content of which there is a ton especially considering the fact that it's only focused on one breed.
- By Jeff | Comments (2)
April Forum Activity Report
For the period March 28th - April 27th.
- Ranchers.net 31.8%
- Cattle-Today 31.6%
- Steerplanet 23.2%
- Advantage Cattle Services 7.3%
- Breedersworld 2.6%
- 5BarX 2.4%
- Clubcalves 0.8%
- Showsteers 0.2%
- EDJE 0.0%
Overall forum activity was down 15.1% from March. While the relative rankings remained constant; Breedersworld, Clubcalves, and EDJE were all down significantly.
These stats only included one week of Breedersworld's new username system but there were more posts on that site on the 19th than all days after that combined. Honestly, I figured there might be more coming to that site after somebody invested in it last year. However, if the only innovation they plan on bringing to it is adding another row of ads it's going to be hard to maintain their forum.
- By Jeff | Comments (0)
Rosanky - MEGA Sale Results
In general the female prices were the same as last year but with a lack of the $10k+ type lots. In other words, the top of the top end wasn’t there just like every other sale we have a comparable previous sale report for this Spring.
It’s hard to find another Angus sale that not only doesn’t order the bulls by $B but doesn’t even list it. The bulls were down about $300/head from $2,850 last year to $2,561 (it would have been the same if they had the same amount of bulls as last year). The high seller was a $7,500 New Edition son.
CLICK HERE for the full sale report.
- By Jeff | Comments (0)
KNP "Production" Sale
I just got back from the KNP “Production”
While not as bad as the word “dispersal”, the term “production sale” can be abused. When a sale includes cattle bred by Mark Ray, Geffert Cattle Company, another unnamed ranch in Montana, Circle V Maines, Camp Cooley Ranch, Ohlde Brother Cattle Co., and K&A Ranch it’s hard to keep a straight face when you’re told it’s a production sale for another ranch. That’s not a slam on those ranches, they had no control over what happened when they sold their genetics. In fact, I’m sure a few of them would have preferred to get what their cattle got this time instead of when they sold them to KNP.
I wondered about the sources of the cattle at this ‘production’ sale when I saw a Geffert heifer in the sale. I remembered a $1,400 Geffert Chi that slipped through under the money in
She was what made me look into the pedigrees a bit more and realize the sale was full of trader cattle. The two Chisum heifers that were the bottom of the Denver Class Act
I didn’t mention it before the sale and wouldn’t even mention it now if it weren’t for the fact that they didn’t talk about where those heifers came from on the sale block either. I don’t know about the winning bidder on that $3,200 heifer but I do know the runner up had no clue what her story was.
The full sale report is linked below but take it with a grain of salt. There’s really no way for a person like me to know what sold and what didn’t. Unless I know better I give people the benefit of the doubt regarding buy backs. However, the featured bull in the sale was a bull that they ‘sold’ ½ possession of and semen lots in last year’s sale and they sold him again this year but full possession this time.
Hey, there’s nothing wrong with trading cattle, it’s a legitimate business that serves a purpose. Please don’t misinterpret this as a condemnation of the practice because that’s not what it is at all.
However, if that’s what you are doing, don’t call it a production sale.
KNP Jaworski sold for $6,250 after selling for $5,000 last year.
The top two heifers were bought by Fred DeRouchey for $7,750 (lot 7) and $5,000 (lot 1)
In my opinion, the best calf in the sale was a three-week old Spice daughter out of a DCC The Man cow that sold for $3,500
- By Jeff | Comments (0)
Christensen Bull Sale
The Christensen bull sale averaged about $2,300 on 102 head of bulls. The Meyer 734 semen averaged right at $440/straw.
You can click the link below for a full lot by lot sale report...
...or you can click the next link, pay $20/year, and get a report with sale averages sent to your cell phone...
Fast and Accurate Event Results
- By Jeff | Comments (0)
Busy Sale Day
It’s a safe bet that I just don’t know when it was but I don’t recall a day when there has ever been as many sales broadcast online as today.
If you are looking for a day to hold a sale next Spring, it might be a good idea to go ahead and scratch the last weekend of April off your list.
- Christensen Simmentals (DVA)
- Gillispie Farms Angus sale (LA)
- Circle A Red angus (LA)
- Shady Brook Angus (LA)
- Sahannah Livestock and KNP Cattle “Production” sale (LA)
- Donors Unlimited (LA)
- Wienk Charolais (LA)
- Sunset View Family Traditions
- National Belted Golloway Sale (EDJE)
- Springtime in
But not a single sale on
I sort of wanted to stay home and see if I could fit all of those sales on my setup at the same time. However the KNP sale is reselling a bunch of cattle they’ve bought in various sales over the past year holding their production sale an hour from here and I can’t pass up the opportunity to go look at some cattle.
- By Jeff | Comments (2)
Ivermectin Off-Lable Uses
We're dry, very dry. If we got a 15" rain tomorrow, our drought condition would officially improve from exceptional to extreme.
However, no more than 15-minutes after popping out the pour-on, it starts raining. We quit, it stops raining. We start up again, it starts raining again. We stop, the rain stops. We finally decide it's done and what happens? Yeah, take a guess.
- By Jeff | Comments (0)
There are a lot of things I simply don’t understand. Just to list a few: Longhorn cattle, $5,000 embryos, why ease of movement matters in terminal steer shows where the steers are done feeding, and most of all miniature donkey shows (no, the ones they have in stock shows you pervert).
However, there’s one thing that has left me feeling more out of the loop than anything I’ve seen since the Macarena (and I said that before Joel McHale) was the hot thing…Twitter. If you have a TV you’ve heard of it and probably wondered what it is. If you didn’t hear about it, your wife saw it on The View, and if she missed it there, she caught it on Oprah.
To put it politely, if you think blogs such as this one are nothing but a waste of time where self absorbed people talk about things nobody cares about…multiply it by a hundred…now you’ve got Twitter. It’s a site that allows you to leave quick blurbs about what you are doing and see a list of what people you are following are doing. At first glance it sounds like a way to stalk people and/or pretend that others want to stalk you.
Why should you care? Twitter is THE big thing amongst the techies and has been for quite some time now. The last web marketing conference I went to in March might as well have been sponsored by Twitter with how much they focused on using it. I’ve said it over and over and it applies here, the “Ag” Internet is 3-5 years behind the rest of the Internet.
I finally got around to opening a Twitter account about a week ago to keep my users on my primary sites updated with what I’m doing. I don’t pretend that they care what I eat for lunch. They only care what I’m doing because it keeps them informed of when an update is coming for the site they take part in.
You know what? I’m ashamed to admit this, but Twitter is a bit interesting once you start using it. I know there are people that are reading this very blog that I’d like to follow on Twitter. My account can be found HERE (thirdrowjeff). As of now I’m only following two people, Cherie Carrabba and Luan Williams who is “sitting in [her] chair watching the astros and facebooking” as I type this.
I could easily see how this could be used as a marketing tool for steer jocks. For example…
“Just saw a monster My Turn calf over at so-and-sos”
“Just got word that Ivy League is collecting”
“We just sorted the show heifers for sale”
…etc.
Long story short (400 words too late), here’s your chance to get ahead of the curve and sign up for an account.
- By Jeff | Comments (0)
Cattleman2Cattleman Sale Report
I forgot about the Cattleman2Cattleman sale last night so I missed virtually all of the embryos. However, the new pre-approval system got me a buyer’s number within 5-minutes.
I have to say I think they’ve got the pre-bid auctioneer system down pat now (and I’m not just saying that due to the free advertising I got when I bid). It’s always going to be a bit awkward but they figured out a good mix of auctioneering when things are slow and sitting back and letting people bid when they’re hot. It takes forever but it’s unfortunately necessary evil with that many semen lots.
Some semen highlights…
- Sonny – $506
- Heat Wave - $290
- DJ Salute - $225
- 6807 - $216
- Epinal - $185
- Friction – Just under $150
- Heat Wave One - $136
- Lutton - $125
- Upgrade - $104
Some bulls that didn’t sell as well as they have lately…
- Ali – About $70
- Manchild and About Time went for $5
- By Jeff | Comments (2)
Breedersworld Forum
Why doesn't Cattle.com have a forum? Because they're an absolute pain the ass to moderate. Kids whine about the first amendment when they are told they have to be mature. You wake up at 6 AM and find out another idiot has decided to post pornographic pictures for fun. Your best contributors have a bad day and take it out on you. That doesn't being to cover the joys of dealing with people attacking you because some coward posts under an assumed name.
Every other site I own has a very active forum. This site is my pleasure, not my work.
In a very related story, Breedersworld, is switching to a username requirement today. It's not hard to understand why and if you know anything about the history of cattle forums, it's hard to resist the temptation to assume the same thing happened to them that happened to every other forum.
For the record, I'm all in favor of people posting under their real names and I always post under jschroeder or third row, the name of my "company". If it were up to me, everyone would include their real name with any post or comment on the Internet (our "Rate my Calf" section is an exception in that it's meant for people who want anonymous feedback).
While they haven't been completely demolished by the Steerplanet jugernaut like other forums, it's hard to come to any other conclusion other than their lack of a username requirement has played a role in that. Clubcalves tried making a change from the outdated Boardhost forums a while back and ended up switching back within a few days. It will be interesting to see what happens to the forums there.
- By Jeff | Comments (1)
Add Site to Update List
By far and away the most used page on this site is now the Recently Updated Cattle Sites page. It gets the most page views of any page other than the front page and is the page the most users leave the site from (ooh, yay for me). I added Google analytics tracking to the outbound links yesterday afternoon and in the first 4 hours each of the pages that had been updated on the 15th had been visited 5-10 times from the links on that page.
In the hope of adding more sites to the list that is checked each day, we’ve added a site submission page that will add your site to it…
CLICK HERE for the site submission tool.
Please note that our spider doesn’t check the status of dynamically generated pages at this time. It will eventually, it just doesn’t do it yet.
- By Jeff | Comments (0)
April Cattle Site Report
- Cattle Today Sites 23.59%
- CattleNetwork.com 21.49%
- Beefmagazine.com 8.61% (5)
- Cattle.com 8.34%
- Showsteers.com 8.22% (6)
- Cattlerange.com 7.29% (3)
- Primetimeagrimarketing.com 4.83%
- Cattlepages.com 3.52% (7)
- Steerplanet.com 2.67% (8)
- Cattlegrower.com 2.65%
Cattlegrower.com was added to the index and Primetimeagrimarketing was put back in after a one month anomaly. They took the spots of Clubcalves and EDJECattle.com.
Cattle Today flipped with Cattlnetwork again.
Other than that, it was the same old stuff.
- By Jeff | Comments (0)
Breed Association Registration Fees
We’ve got papers from the Angus, Red Angus, Simmental, Maine-Anjou, Charolais, Chianina, Brahman, and Red Brangus (don’t ask, she’ll be a part of this sale report on Wednesday) breed associations. Sometimes I’ve wondered how much was spent on all of those registration certificates considering how little we use them.
I’ve heard people gripe about Shorthorn registration fees in the past which doesn’t make a darn bit of sense if the numbers I found HERE are right. One guy I spoke with wanted $100 to register a heifer as a Chi which appears to be a complete rip off even if he’s not a member of the association.
So what DOES each breed association charge for papers?
Since Michigan State ruined my plans when they forgot to show up for the game last night, I took a few minutes to find out. In order to keep it uniform, I tried to find the cost for a member to register a bull, just under 12-months old, with performance data, and no whole herd reporting. If I got some of these numbers wrong, please don’t hesitate to let me know...
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American Simmental Association $52.00
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American Maine-Anjou Association $30.00
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American Angus Association $27.00
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American Gelbvieh Association $26.50
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American
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American Brahman Association $25.00
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Santa Gertrudis Breeders International $25.00
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American-International Charolais Association $22.00
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Beefmaster Breeders United $22.00
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American Chianina Association $20.00
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North American
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American Shorthorn Association $15.00
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Red Angus Association of
(I got tired of looking for the fee on the Brangus site)
It appears that was a complete waste of time. The only association that charges anything outside the $15-30 range is the American Simmental Association and that’s just because they’re trying to get their members to take part in total herd enrollment. In fact, most associations have gone to a whole herd reporting type structure.
- By Jeff | Comments (3)
Lonestar Revue
I have no business buying cows right now. You can tell exactly where our cows pissed two-days ago because those are the only green spots in pastures. You know it wasn’t three days ago because the growth is eaten by then. We’re pulling cows out of dry stock tanks, moving out of non-watered leases altogether, and back to the game from three years ago of listing the bottom end in order of when they to go to the auction barn.
However, there are a few cows that I’ve always wanted a female out of. One of those has always been the Hollywood Queen cow at Triple C. When a daughter of hers by a Heat Seeker son slipped through at $1,700 after the flush mate sold for $3,900 I couldn’t resist.
Overall the sale was down and down bad, you just can't raise cattle for what they sold for. As it appears to be the case in lot of sales, the top end still sold well but the second tier cattle were off significantly. There was no drop off at all in the show heifer prospects @$2,650. The Spring born open heifers were down $100/head and the bred heifers were down significantly from $2,146 to a barely more than quality commercial cattle price of $1,257. Obviously I'm not the only one in Texas in a drought....
- By Jeff | Comments (1)
Livestockjudging.com
We went and shot video at the Montgomery County Fair yesterday for my pet project, Livestockjudging.com. Click the link below to see the classes as we get them up...
http://www.livestockjudging.com/practice/contest.aspx?id=4
The people who run that contest were EXTREMELY helpful in getting the video shot. They also ran a pretty darn efficient little contest if I do say so myself. If you're looking for another warm up next Spring, make sure to check them out.
That contest had the full FFA lineup; classes, keep cull, questions, and a quiz. It will give us the opportunity to add a ton of functionality to the site.
We've got about three more contests scheduled to be shot this Spring but I've given up on convincing some contests to let us shoot video. I can tell within 30-seconds of speaking with the people in charge of a contest if they'll let us shoot video or if we're going to be sent around in so many bureaucratic loops that we could have raised livestock for practice classes ourselves.
- By Jeff | Comments (0)
Forum Activity Index
- Ranchers.net 31.1%
- Cattle-Today 29.4%
- Steerplanet 27.0%
- Advantage Cattle Services 5.2%
- Breedersworld 3.7%
- 5BarX 1.9%
- Clubcalves 1.4%
- Showsteers 0.2%
- EDJE 0.1%
Overall activity was up another 3.2% over the previous period.
In most cases, the drop in percentage for sites that were previously in the index was not due to a drop in traffic. The drop was due to the addition of the Ranchers.net forum which is extremely active. If that site hadn't been added to the index, Steerplanet would have risen to 39.2% and Cattle-Today would have dropped to 42.8%.
Steerplanet had another significant rise in posts per day during the period for a new high for that site. It's not going out on a limb to predict that they will pass up Cattle-Today for the #2 spot this month.
The forum with the most growth was Clubcalves.com but that just means they now have as many posts per day as the top three each have per hour.
The EDJE forum was added but only includes data for the cattle oriented portion of that forum.
The Cattlegrower.com forum has been benchmarked to be included in the ranking next month.
- By Jeff | Comments (6)