No… I am not referring to the holiday season. I am referring to bull sale season. From January through April, there are hundreds and hundreds of bull sales. I receive many bull sale catalogs in the mail each and every week. Most of them go straight to the recycle bin. If I have time, I will thumb through a few of them. Ninety-nine percent of them are marketing the exact same product – even though the breed and color varies.
I also receive five or six beef publications every week. I subscribe to these publications so I can keep up on what members of the status quo herd are thinking and doing. Not surprisingly, there have been several articles about calving in the snow. Stupid is as stupid does. This time of year, those publications are four times thicker than they were a few months ago, because they are chock-full of bull sale advertisements. ‘Tis the season.
Last Sunday morning, I sat down with a cup of coffee and went through my pile of sale catalogs and beef publications. Once again, all of the bulls being offered for sale are basically the same. They are way-over-fat, high-input Diesel Bulls. They are guaranteed to melt and fall apart when you take them home and introduce them to the real world. That’s probably why there are articles written about how to keep your bulls fed up so they are ready for their first breeding season.
In one of those publications there was an article entitled “What is a bull worth this year?” For at least 40 years, the standard answer has been, “A bull is worth the value of five calves.” According to CattleFax, a 500-pound steer calf was worth over $2500 last week. WOW! If you multiply that by five, you come up with $12,500! That seems high – but as I read the bull sale results in those publications, I found several sales that averaged substantially more than $12,500.
I think we need to accept the fact that bulls will cost considerably more this year than ever before. That being the case, doesn’t it make sense to buy bulls that won’t melt and fall apart when you take them home? Doesn’t it make sense to purchase bulls that can successfully breed 30 to 40 cows their first year – and 50-plus cows thereafter? And doesn’t it make sense to buy bulls that will last at least twice as long the average Diesel Bull?
What most bull producers do to get a bull ready for the sale and his first breeding season is equivalent to getting a long-distance runner ready for a marathon by setting him down in front of the television and feeding him nothing but donuts for four months. Consequently, it’s been estimated that only one out of three overfat Diesel Bulls will last long enough to have a second breeding season. With bulls costing as much as they do, that is totally unacceptable!
If you’re looking for an alternative to the overfed, high-input Diesel Bulls everyone else is selling, Pharo Cattle Company® will be offering 440 low-input Solar Bulls in our three April bull sales. This offering will include Angus, Red Angus, Polled Hereford and Heat-Tolerant Composite bulls. If you would like to receive a catalog for these sales, call 800-311-0995 – or click on the link above.
Quote Worth Re-Quoting
“There are three kinds of people in this world: people who make things happen, people who watch things happen, and people who wonder what happened.” ~ Ron Kaufman