Selling Cattle With Video and Satellite

When our steers are about 800lbs. they're ready to hit the road. We winter our late spring born calves and let them graze right through spring and summer so they are ready for market in August and September. We raise cattle with a little “ear” and have many people advising us that the market will dock us for this trait. But come the 100 degree days of August we find the buyers are always interested in bidding on well grown, green [no grain feeding] yearlings that won’t faint on the truck trip to the feedlot. We have been using video sales to market our steers for the last ten years or so. If you have a potload [50,000 lbs.] of cattle close enough in weight and of one sex, video sales are a good way to receive bids and sell your cattle without taking your cattle off the farm until after you have a deal and are assured of payment. Here’s how it works with us. We weigh and then sort out a potload of steers ready for market. We sort the biggest and the best, removing outliers and cattle with defects that would be unfair to the buyer, such as real bad eyes or bad feet etc. We call the representative from the stockyard who comes to the farm, looks over the cattle, takes all the pertinent information such as date of birth, breeding, vaccinations and feeding program, and then video tapes the cattle. Back at the office the tape is matched