Other Denver News
New Display Rules
Most owners had heard rumors that they were going to have to keep their displays up through Sunday. Saturday morning a gentleman with the NWSS was handing out these little yellow sheets to the owners. I asked him if it meant they were going to have the bulls out and he said they should be there. However, the sheet didn’t explicitly say anything about the bulls.
The vast majority of the displays did stay up through at least 2:30 PM on Sunday when I left. Very few bulls were actually in the displays and if it weren’t for Phil Lautner having all of his bulls up it would have been pretty sparse.
There was extremely light traffic that day as most people have been programmed to think there aren’t any bulls on Sunday. If the policy is clear going in to next year though, it might make the trip easier and ease up on some of the Saturday mad house.
Monopoly
Despite what people who should know better in the yards claim, he’s producing at Matt’s place. Evidently the fact that he’s not at stud and/or the price it brought at the Embryos on Snow caused some to claim he’s not producing without just asking the guys who own the bull who were right there to ask all weekend.
New Photography Rules
We only had one small snag with Show Champions and once we explained what we were doing we were good to go. If we hadn’t gotten approval from the NWSS I don’t think we would have been able to video the bulls this year.
New Subleasing Rules
In previous years, almost all of the bull displays were subleased. This meant that if you wanted to take a bull you had to get in with the right person willing to sublease you their spot. The waiting list to get an actual stall space was insanely long.
That has all changed this year. Now, if you aren’t going to have a bull on display you lose your spot. If you aren’t the company/person who will be displaying the bull/booth, you lose your spot. Essentially, it added liquidity to the stalling process that allowed more bull owners to bring bulls.
Whereas in some of the past few years half the displays were empty, this year you could count the amount of empty spaces on one hand. People who got on the waiting list last spring were given access to spots, something absolutely unheard of in previous years.
Long story short, while the new herd bull alley rules may have rankled a few feathers the value in taking the trip to see the bulls has taken a huge step forward. The lack of clear public communication comes from the fact that most of this has come down very recently. Next year I’d assume everything ought to be much more clear a lot further in advance.
- By Jeff
Comments
william wrote:1/17/2011
There was extremely light traffic that day as most people have been programmed to think there aren’t any bulls on Sunday. If the policy is clear going in to next year though, it might make the trip easier and ease up on some of the Saturday mad house.
Jeff,
I appreciate your effort in trying to deduce this matter, but I have to say that you are off target. The reason there are few bulls on display on Sunday is due to the fact that the foot traffic is so light, not vise versa. No bull owner that has invested that much money and time already would pull out of Denver for the heck of it. The reason the bull owners all leave is because there is no real interest in the yards on Sunday. The people who come to Denver to see the display bulls come to view on Fri and Sat, then on Sunday they are traveling home so they can get back into the routine of their daily lives. It is not a matter of the bull owners being pompus asses it is a matter of being practical for all of those involved, spectators and bull owners alike.
Jeff Schroeder wrote:
1/17/2011
It's a chicken and egg thing. In the past you couldn't even try to display on Sunday because it was quite literally nothing but a pile of dirt by mid-afternoon.
If the National Western makes it worth the trip on Sunday through their new efforts, people will actually show up to see the bulls on Sunday, thus giving bull owners a reason to display.
william wrote:
1/17/2011
Jeff,
I still have to disagree with you. They can make the bulls stay as long as they want, but the people who are actually there to view the bulls are not hanging around the yards on Sunday. And I'm not talking about the townies walking around to look at the pretty "cows". Look at the sales Friday and Saturday in the yards for example. Maine bull sale and Duello's sale are hopping. But on Sunday there are high quality cattle offered in the Chi sale and no one is there. Consequently the Chi sale has started to slide in numbers in the past few years. People are traveling home on Sunday. That's the way its always been, and that's the way it will always be.
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