Cattle.com

Blog Archive September 2011

What's the average cost of embryos?

$799.34 based on 1,022 different embryo lots sold over the past five-years.

(Slow week for the blog, we've got three livestock judging contests within a week to get on tape.)


Tuesday - September 27th

2011 vs 2010 Online Steer Sale Prices

With 631 steers counted this year vs 648 last year, the average price of a steer in the online sales has remained as close to exactly the same as it gets at $3,038 this year vs $3,043 for last year.  The median price of $2,000 is also exactly the same.

Vaccination

I get it, you have a computer and you check this blog, you know vaccinations are important, this isn’t ground breaking news.  Personally, I’ve never seen such extreme differences in cattle that were vaccinated vs those that were not (get in the pen you crazy cow) than during this year’s drought.  It’s virtually always worth the money but when cattle are stressed, the ROI increases dramatically.

Cost of College

After watching a few kids struggle to pay for it this fall, WOW.  I’m going on record and saying I’m glad I graduated in 2001 (okay, 2002) because I don’t know how kids do it now.  My student loans would be 3-4 times what they were when I went if I were going now but the starting pay really isn’t that much more.  It’s gotten well beyond the point that you don’t need to be in school if you have to ask “what do you do with a degree in…” about your own education.

Now, would all of the old Brahman cows eating cactus please move over to this pen...

No, don’t worry, nothing is up.  That’s silly, who told you that, why would we be going to L&H?  They’re not even taking drive up customers right now.  You’re just going to go live in town and we’ll find some nice city people that will take care of you.  No, your calves are staying here.  Yeah, sure, whatever, they'll come see you in town some time, is that good?

Now please, that's enough, get in the trailer in an orderly fashion so we can get going before the line gets too long.

Oh hey, I can't believe I didn't think of this, have you ever seen any of Temple Grandin's designs?  No?  Well, you're in for a BIG treat.


Announcement from the Texas Animal Health Commission (TAHC)

Attention Cattle Buyers & Shippers

 

Due to the severe drought, a number of Texas cattle are currently being moved to other states.

 

Cattle that are being shipped from Texas must meet the animal health entry requirements
of the receiving state. These entry requirements are mandated by the state of destination
not by the state of origin. Different classes of cattle may be subject to different interstate
animal health requirements. It is the owner/shipper responsibility to insure the shipment
of cattle have obtained the needed/proper documents, ie. Certificate of Veterinary Inspection
(CVI), entry permit, etc. 

 

It is also the responsibility of the shipper to obtain the services of an accredited veterinarian
to complete a CVI (health certificate) for the cattle being shipped interstate. 

Violations of interstate animal health requirements by Texas shippers can negatively impact
the marketability of Texas cattle. 

 

The Texas Animal Health Commission (TAHC) and accredited veterinarians can assist
cattle shippers with interstate cattle movement questions. By working together we can
insure that Texas cattle continue to be valued by the cattle industries in other states. 

 

Contact your local TAHC region office for more information.
Region 1 Amarillo 806-354-9335
Region 2 Hempstead 979-921-9481
Region 3 Fort Worth 817-244-2597
Region 4 Mount Pleasant 903-572-1966
Region 5 Beeville 361-358-3234
Region 6 Lampasas 512-556-6277
Region 7 Rockdale 512-446-2507

 

 

Texas Animal Health Commission * 1-800-550-8242  

 

Yvonne "Bonnie" Ramirez
Texas Animal Health Commission (TAHC)

Director of Communications & Public Relations

"Like" us on Facebook www.facebook.com/TexasAHC

"Follow" us on Twitter www.twitter.com/TAHC


Gracious in Defeat

Good Game OSU

Do the offenses in the SEC huddle?  I sure hope so.

You Got Us Buzzards

We've been starving you pretty darn good this year but a leg back on a cow got you a nice little breakfast tomorrow morning. 


Movie Recommendation

If you get chance, go watch Moneyball today.

It's a heart warming story about how mathematics and rampant steroid use can create a great baseball team.


Bulk Mail Lists

Wednesday morning about 10:30 AM I started sending all bulk mail that I get in my inbox to a ‘bulk mail’ folder.  No, not a spam folder, just a folder to receive all newsletters and bulk mailings until I want to take a few minutes to look at them.  The main purpose is to remove a bit of the clutter from my inbox to get attention for 'regular' e-mails.

I did it by setting up a rule for each bulk mail sender to automatically move e-mails from them to that folder.  About noon on Thursday I started wondering if I was doing it right because I kept getting more mail that I had to create more rules for.

So, I went to my bulk folder to take a look at just how many bulk e-mails I get a day.  The list below is a list of the 52 bulk e-mail lists I’m on that I received e-mail from in a 30-hr period.

I want to stress that I have no problem with any of these e-mails, I subscribed to all of them or clicked the “keep me up to date” box for services bought from the companies.  I use e-mail marketing and it works.

  • ABestWEb
  • Adobe
  • Amazon.com
  • Ancestry.com
  • Caldwell-Willoughby Sales
  • CattleMax
  • Compete.com
  • DP Sales
  • Drovers
  • DVAuction
  • Ebay
  • Epson America
  • Experts Exchange
  • Farm and Ranch Freedom Alliance
  • Godaddy.com
  • Groupon
  • HBO Go
  • Hewlett-Packard
  • Hilton Honors
  • Integrated Breeders Service
  • Intuit
  • Jos. A Bank
  • Kevin Mears
  • Liveauctions.tv
  • Living Social
  • LMAAuctions
  • Network Solutions
  • Office Depot
  • Park Hill Baptist Church
  • Phil Reid
  • Pinzgauer Association
  • Ranch House Designs
  • Road Runner (Time Warner)
  • Rosetta Stone
  • RuralAds.com
  • Shareasale.com
  • Showpig.com
  • Showsteers.com
  • Southwest Airlines
  • SSWUG.org
  • Superior Productions
  • Target
  • Texas A&M Athletics
  • Texas Angus Association
  • The Wendt Group
  • TigerDirect
  • Travelocity
  • Wolverine Studios
  • WordPress
  • Wordtracker
  • Zendesk
  • Zynga


July 2011 Cattle Site Visitor Report

Yes, July, Quantcast is terribly slow these days.

  1. Cattle Today Sites 27.28%
  2. Cattle.com 13.82% (4)
  3. Cattlerange.com 13.22%
  4. Beefmagazine.com 11.74% (5)
  5. CattleNetwork.com 11.08% (2)
  6. Steerplanet.com 7.26%
  7. Showsteers.com 6.49%
  8. Clubcalves.com 2.88% (9)
  9. Cattlepages.com 2.39% (8)
  10. Cattleconnections.com 0.78%

The individual rankings aren't hugely informative but there are groupings that tend to hold from month to month.

Cattle Today dominates as it pretty much always has.

There's a group in the 2-5 range that you can essentially throw into a hat and see where they'll rank each month.

Steerplanet and Showsteers are pretty consistent in that 6-7 spot but Steerplanet has been consistently moving up, has passed Showsteers consistently, and is on their way to making a 2-6 group.

Clubcalves and Cattlepages are grouped at 8-9.

The #10 spot is whichever random site in the 10-15 range has the best luck in getting traffic counted on the third party tools we use.

Full Report Here


Online Sale Average Steer Prices Consistent from 2010

With 648 steers in 43 sales, the 2010 average price of steers sold in online sales was $3,043.

Through 533 steers in 44 sales the 2011 average price is $3,066.


Color Pattern Identification

This color pattern is commonly referred to as “forget you guys, I’m going home with a spoiled little girl whose daddy can’t tell her no and she is going to name me Oreo and pamper me like nothing else until the day she cries her eyes out as I leave”.


Most Popular Youtube Videos Link

I've added a link to the Youtube pages on the right hand side of this page.

http://www.cattle.com/video/most_watched.aspx

Of note, every single one of them for the past 30-days is a calf sale video.


Youtube Views vs Sale Price

Is there a correlation between Youtube views for a sale and the final price of a lot?

Last week I went on a mission to find out by taking final sale prices and Youtube video views for lots from seven different sales and matched them up.   The first thing that I found out is trying to correlate Youtube views to final price was a waste of time.  Overall, the final sale price is and Youtube views are not directly correlated much at all. 

However, if you take each sale and look at the Youtube views vs the average for the sale and the final sale price for the average of the sale, the data starts to make just a tick more sense.

The following chart is based on that data.  The x-axis is the amount of Youtube views a calf got vs the average for the sale and the y-axis is the final sale price of the calf vs the sale average.  As an example, a calf that gets the same amount of Youtube views as the average for the sale and sells for the average price of the sale would be a dot at 1:1 (ironically, there’s actually a small ‘hole’ in the results at that spot as it doesn’t seem to actually happen)

What does this show?  It’s not a concrete 1:1 correlation at all but there are several nuggets (of admittedly minor utility) that can be gleaned from it…

If a calf gets over the average amount of views for the sale, there is a 70% chance it will sell for more than the average price of the sale.

If a calf gets less than the average amount of views for the sale, there is an 81% chance it will sell for less than the sale average.

Calves that get less than 50% as many views as the average of the sale, sell for approximately 58% of the sale average.

Calves that get more than 150% as many views as the average of the sale, sell for approximately 195% of the average of the sale.

There is a 75% chance that if a calf gets more than 150% of the sale average views that it will sell for more than 150% of the average price of the sale.


More QR Code Foolishness

After noticing a quote from an EDJE rep in another magazine referencing their adoption of the technology I decided to see just how they're using it and if they're using it legitimately or just throwing it on there and telling people they know what they're doing.

Well, the "We're on the cutting EDJE" ad on page 64 of the September Showbox Magazine in which they talk about leading the way with QR codes has a QR code that leads to a 404 page...

http://www.edje.com/printdesign.html


Communication Failure

283 Days Ago

Me - Are you sure you want me to breed her back to Heat Wave?  That was the big one you lost, we've got plenty of other bulls we can try.

Dad - Yeah, go ahead, that was a good calf, you should have seen him.  He was dead, but really, really good.

Me - Do you PROMISE me you're going to keep an eye on her?  You know we'll have baby twins at that time.

Dad - Yeah, yeah, go ahead.

Two Days Ago

Dad - blah, blah blah, that Gardiner/RAB cow is getting pretty close too....

Me - Remember to watch that, we redid a tough calving from last year.

Dad - Oh, that was her?  I'll keep an eye on her.

Today

Dad - That nice Gardiner/RAB cow is off by herself, but she's a pretty mature and big cow, I don't think we need to worry too much about her.

 

*I went ahead and drove down to check her.  She was breech but it was an easy pull.


Updated Sites Page/Check

The updated sites spider has been encouraged to move along with a hot shot and is working again.


Vickland Sale Restarted

Not exactly breaking news here, it's been announced via e-mail, Steerplanet, and Facebook but the Vickland sale has been stopped and restarted due to a fraudulent bidder...


In order to maintain the integrity of Vickland Show Cattle and Caldwell-Willoughby Sales the decision was made to delay the final bid-off for this group of cattle.  Given our strong record of high standards in all of our auction services we will continue to maintain the highest level of integrity with the on-line bidding process.  We will not tolerate artificial inflation of bids from any entity.  Any unethical or illegal bidding activity will be pursued to the fullest extent by Caldwell-Willoughby sales in order to maintain a safe bidding environment for our customers.

More details from Sneed at Steerplanet.

I want it to be on the record that there are about a dozen easy jokes I could make about an issue (fraud, but has nothing to do with this sale) going on in south Texas right now that I did not make out of respect for the families of those involved.


Great News for Texans

Cattle Auction Runs are Exploding

The runs have been large for obvious reasons for quite some time now.  However, there's a wave exploding right now.  It took an average of 3-hours or waiting in line to unload in Nixon on Sunday.  I was told Three Rivers sold cattle all night last night.  You can’t see the auction report because “Due to Texas Department of Agriculture and Texas Livestock Market News Program budget cuts the [Three Rivers] report will no longer be compiled and released.”

La Nina

Is back.

Texas A&M is Going to the SEC

According to highly reliable sources out of Waco, this will crash the entire Texas economy.

Environmentalists are Going After Fracking

I’ll admit that the whole fracking thing seems like an awful lot of risk and water use but if you haven’t been paying attention, the storm from the hippies is just starting to pick up steam.  They’re targeting the White House with a mass call-in today.  For those that aren’t familiar, fracking is what Rick Perry is talking about when he brags about job growth in Texas.


Top Sires of Fall Steer Sales so Far

It may be 2011 but Heat Wave is most certainly still Heat Wave...

  1. Heat Wave - $5,425 (24)
  2. Eye Candy - $3,527 (16)
  3. Immortal - $3,197 (18)
  4. Monopoly - $3,027 (26)
  5. Walks Alone - $2,343 (21)
  6. Champ - $1,908 (6)

Based on 212 steers sold in 18 sales.

0

August 2011 Top 25 Cattle Videos

The stats cut off for August posted videos was 5:00 PM September 9th.

For a good portion of the month, it looked like this ranking would be dominated by MLC stock show videos.  Then sale season started.

Based on our stats, the three dozen cattle oriented Youtube channels we check posted 673 videos in the month of August.  The previous record was 507 videos posted in May of this year and prior to that, 406 in March of this year.  There have been 329 videos posted so far this month.

The cut off for the top 25 most popular videos (the top 3.7% of all videos posted to the channels we check) was 736 views.  19 of the top 25 videos posted in the month of August were sale videos.  Brad Hook sets up individual channels for each of his clients and all of the calf videos that were done by people other than Maximum Exposure were done by Brad Hook B.S.  All of the videos in the top 25 that were not calf videos were MLC TV stock show videos.

Top 25 videos by producer…

  1. Brad Hook – 11
  2. Maximum Exposure - 8
  3. Matt Lautner Cattle TV - 6
Rank Video Info Views
1 LW 14 breedersworld lot 3
Southern Ohio Sale
8/21/2011
1,845
2 Iowa State Fair - Grand Champion Steer Drive Sponsored by Allen Show Steers on MLC TV
Matt Lautner Cattle
8/17/2011
1,737
3 Tag 118
Campbell Cattle
8/27/2011
1,442
4 Indiana State Fair - Grand Champion Steer Drive - Sponsored By Gray Show Cattle On MLCTV
Matt Lautner Cattle
8/8/2011
1,350
5 LW 91 breedersworld lot 15
Southern Ohio Sale
8/21/2011
1,347
6 Jeff Miller 2011 Online Club Calf Sale Tag16.flv
Maximum Exposure
8/26/2011
1,315
7 LW 24 breedersworld lot 11
Southern Ohio Sale
8/21/2011
1,301
8 Jeff Miller 2011 Online Club Calf Sale Tag 9584.flv
Maximum Exposure
8/27/2011
1,144
9 Illinois State Fair - Grand Champion Steer Drive On MLCTV Sponsored By Rohrbach Cattle Co
Matt Lautner Cattle
8/14/2011
1,068
10 Tag 100
Campbell Cattle
8/28/2011
1,057
11 LW 34 breedersworld lot 5
Southern Ohio Sale
8/21/2011
1,045
12 Tag 102
Campbell Cattle
8/28/2011
934
13 Jeff Miller 2011 Online Club Calf Sale Tag 24.flv
Maximum Exposure
8/27/2011
890
14 Jeff Miller 2011 Online Club Calf Sale Tag 11.flv
Maximum Exposure
8/26/2011
878
15 Jeff Miller 2011 Online Club Calf Sale Tag 23.flv
Maximum Exposure
8/26/2011
875
16 Wisconsin State Fair - Grand Champion Steer Drive on MLC TV Sponsored by Carrousel Farms
Matt Lautner Cattle
8/10/2011
872
17 Jeff Miller 2011 Online Club Calf Sale Tag 1406.flv
Maximum Exposure
8/27/2011
864
18 Iowa State Fair - Grand Champion Heifer Drive Sponsored by SGK Cattle on MLC TV
Matt Lautner Cattle
8/16/2011
813
19 Larrison Farms Online Sale | TAG 78
Maximum Exposure
8/31/2011
809
20 Tag 3
Gray Show Cattle
8/30/2011
785
21 Iowa State Fair - Grand Champion Market Heifer Drive Sponsored by Ernst and Habeger on MLC TV
Matt Lautner Cattle
8/17/2011
775
22 Tag 120
Campbell Cattle
8/26/2011
758
23 JPK Blue breedersworld lot 4
Southern Ohio Sale
8/21/2011
748
24 Jeff Miller 2011 Online Club Calf Sale Tag 806.flv
Maximum Exposure
8/27/2011
745
25 LW Tag 66 breedersworld lot 1
Southern Ohio Sale
8/24/2011
736


One Year Ago

http://www.cattle.com/read.aspx?id=498

Last legitimate rain we've gotten.


Tour Our Ranch

I just realized I've never actually given you a tour of the ranch.  Let's hop on the Gator and take a drive...

That's the tank behind my parent's house.

That's the tank that went dry in the early 80s when it had catfish in it and I was about five years old.  My dad stepped on one of them while trying to clear the tank and got put in the hospital for a week because of the infection.  Guess which 32 year old web developer still has an irrational fear of handling catfish?

Neighbor's tank.

Tank I built over spring break while I was in college in 2001.

Tank behind where my grandmother's house used to be.

I don't feel like driving all the way back to the two big tanks but they're dry too.  Let's look at a cow...

Have you ever heard that Brahman cattle are hardy and can make it on southern grasses that exotic and british can't?  That's not exactly what they're talking about.  My dad bought that old girl in the spring for a pretty good price as part of a group of commercial working ranch cows.  He'll actually make money after weaning the calf she raised but cows that eat cactus WITH the thorns don't last forever (she was never going to get close to the herd bulls any way).  That, and they sort of freak me out, it just aint right.

This is what we've been doing instead of baling hay.  The brush didn't die off, we killed it.  The lack of grass makes it easy to find young mesquite and huisache growing and kill it.  Our whole place would look like the other side of the fenceline if we weren't spraying an hour a day or so.  If there are positives that will come from this, they'll include a battle tested and culled herd of cows, insanely high replacement female prices, and our pastures might just be ahead of the curve on brush instead of embarassingly far behind it.

Oh hey, lookie there.  It's the daily large grass fire.


Good Question

From Ron Mayer on Facebook...


How is it they can collect fresh boar semen in Nebraska one day and I get it the next day but when I order wash machine part the size of a cell phone from Sears it takes a week and shipping is $38.00?


The Only Weatherman I Listen To

I’ve read the Southern Livestock Standard pretty much my entire life.  It’s not because of any ground breaking aspect of the publication, it’s just that my grandmother (back when she had a clue who I am) used to always have it in her house (back before it burned down) when I’d walk the ¾ mile to go work calves (back before I was fat).

It’s primarily a commercial publication focusing on Brahman influenced, Charolais, Hereford, and Angus sales.  That being said, there’s a reason anyone located in the south should get it regardless of what they raise:  Brian Bledsoe.  His "Weather Wise" column has been right on the money regarding this La Nina stuff and our overall weather patterns.

Though I always feel like someone just punched me in the gut after I read it, Brian Bledsoe's articles are still the first thing I flip to in the Southern Livestock Standard.  His articles are extremely informative and have taught those who read them a lot about what exactly is going on in the Pacific and how that impacts stock tanks in south Texas.  If you are concerned about future weather patterns, there’s just no other way for me to say it: subscribe to the Southern Livestock Standard.

It’s cheap, just $32 for two years.  Commodity guys would pay more than that per issue just for the Weather Wise article.

This is in no way a paid endorsement.


That Joke Came Up Again

I'm posting this and then putting myself on a self-imposed prohibition regarding anything related to conference realignment.  I'm putting a negative search query in all of my Twitter feeds for "sec", "A&M", and "UT", and "Baylor".

This is yet another result of the most important joke about rape ever told in the history of the world.  If Clayton Williams doesn't tell that joke, Ann Richards doesn't become governor, TCU or Houston join the Big XII instead of Baylor (Richard's alma mater), and Baylor isn't in today's news.


"2011 Bloopers"

It doesn't matter how much time you spend in front of a computer sometimes good stuff passes you by for a long time.  If you haven't checked out this facebook picture gallery, you need to...

https://www.facebook.com/#!/media/set/?set=a.2140528832214.133519.1215975027&type=1


Texas Fire Radio Info

http://www.radioreference.com/apps/audio/?feedId=5015

An audio feed of Fire/EMS for an area seeing fires tonight.


On the bright side

Calving heifers has been pretty easy through the first 14 calves because birthweights are down ~10lbs. due to the poor nutrition over the gestation.

Brush is especially easy to find and kill this year because it's the only stuff that's green and there's not even dead grass to conceal the small growth.

I've got all afternoon to spray brush because I can't get home due to a wildfire closing a highway.v

We've been able to clean out seven of our eight stock tanks since they're dry.


Minor Prediction

Perhaps I’ve been reading the ESPN book too much lately (it’s 750+ pages and I’m a slow reader) but…

Within two years stock shows will begin to exclusively license the right to broadcast their steer shows.


Dear Weather.com

You had a typo in your headline.

You lead with the headline for this article "Tropical Wave in Gulf Could Ruin Weekend" on your front page.  You evidently spelled "Answer Prayers" as "Ruin Weekend".

 

update:They changed the headline, no doubt in response to us getting two comments on one post.


RSS Feed Fixed

The RSS Atom feed was showing HTML as code until about 4PM yesterday.  That's been fixed now.


Youtube Cattle Video Study - Part 2 of 5

This was supposed to be posted about two weeks ago, but well, yeah, well, I didn’t.

Since the original post, there’s been one addition to the list, “Iowa State Fair - Grand Champion Steer Drive Sponsored by Allen Show Steers on MLC TV”, posted August 17th breaks in at #100 with right at 1,650 views.

So what is the subject matter that ranks in the top 100 videos out of the 3,862 videos we checked the stats on?  I broke them down into 13 different categories…

  • Bull Videos
  • Calf Videos
  • Cattle Barns/Facilities
  • Denver
  • Horses
  • How To Videos
  • Human Interest
  • Humor/Interesting
  • Judging Cattle
  • Miscellaneous Promotional
  • Show Videos
  • Slaughter Houses
  • Working Cattle

…and what else would I do?  I ranked them.  Because you know me, I rank everything.  Let's just cut to the chase, I like Jack better than Tessa right now.  I know I’m not supposed to say that, but it’s true.  He smiles more, babbles a lot, and is a happier baby.  Tessa ranked higher on my favorite child list about a month ago, but Jack has since passed her up.

So, from the categories of videos with the fewest examples to the most…

#13 – Horse Videos, 2 videos

This is only here because we check them by channels and not explicitly by content so some of the Purina Mills TV videos made it into the top 100.

#12 – Denver, 3 videos

These are the videos Brad Hook did in Denver, not the videos we’ve done.  The top ranked one is “.....Bull Stories - Denver 2010” at #16.

#11 – How-To Videos, 4 videos

Interestingly, 3 of the 4 how to videos in the list are all ranked sequentially in the 39, 40, and 41st spots.

Cattle Showmanship Tips - Sure Champ – It would have been nice to have such great information at your fingertips 10-20 years ago.  Do kids realize how nice they have it?

Pre-Picture Pen – One of Brad’s original videos.

Cattle Torching.wmv – I’ve loved this video myself.  It’s a subject that comes out of left field that nobody would think to do but a lot of people would like to know more about.  We actually talked about it in Sunday school because I posted it to Facebook and well, setting cattle on fire is pretty cool if you’ve never done it.

#10 – Humor/Interesting , 4 videos

While everything on here is in the top ~3% of all cattle videos, the humor/interesting type videos don’t show up until #72 on the list with a video of a dog scaring a bull that Brad Hook put up.  It got most of its views from Brad’s blog and Steerplanet.

#11 – Slaughter Houses – 4 videos

These are actually the most popular videos of the entire thing, taking four out of the top five spots overall.  They’re all Temple Grandin videos of humane killing of animals.  People have a legitimate curiosity about how the meat gets from the store to their plate and it’s sort of nice that this is one of the things they see when they try to research it.


Past Posts