Any Sneed sale results

[kfacres]

we don't buy solid red, 5 frame cattle , that weigh 62 lbs at birth & without Trump in the pedigree. Color me one of the dumb ones.

isn't that the truth. 

 

[cowgirl864]

Go Doc ;D

 

[cattlefarmer]

Wow this is getting to be more entertaining than watching a bunch of high school girls fight over the football team quarterback!!  This thread seems to reminded me of the Shorthorn heifer thread same people fighting over the same thing!!!!  Everybody must be done calving and have free time to get on here durning the day!!! <deadhorse>

 

[long john]

Wow this is getting to be more entertaining than watching a bunch of high school girls fight over the football team quarterback!!  This thread seems to reminded me of the Shorthorn heifer thread same people fighting over the same thing!!!!  Everybody must be done calving and have free time to get on here durning the day!!! <deadhorse>

I was at this sale. It was a really not a bad sale. If you go with a open mind in what Rob and fellow breeders are trying to do with calving easy and GRASS feed cattle. When you look at he wasn't spending $7 dollar corn to get the cattle to look like some people need them. Like Davis Shorthorn said huge crowd. I noticed a fellow breeder from Iowa there that has breed and sold more National Champion Bulls then most.

 

[cattlefarmer]

Wow this is getting to be more entertaining than watching a bunch of high school girls fight over the football team quarterback!!  This thread seems to reminded me of the Shorthorn heifer thread same people fighting over the same thing!!!!  Everybody must be done calving and have free time to get on here durning the day!!! <deadhorse>

I was at this sale. It was a really not a bad sale. If you go with a open mind in what Rob and fellow breeders are trying to do with calving easy and GRASS feed cattle. When you look at he wasn't spending $7 dollar corn to get the cattle to look like some people need them. Like Davis Shorthorn said huge crowd. I noticed a fellow breeder from Iowa there that has breed and sold more National Champion Bulls then most.

I am not talking about Robs sale.  I am talking about the 3 pages of other garbage on this post.  Can't believe were asking how the sale was ended up!

 

[aj]

Dang....I'm getting tired of people getting tired of.....people getting tired of this post. I wish people would quit posting. End this post! I think the deal is really pretty simple. There are acres and acres of bulls for sale out there. There are acres and acres of black bulls for sale out there. It all goes back to the color deal. The black hided deal is getting so rediculous that there are so only so many spaces available in the red hided market share. It is a big barrier where I live anyway. Yes there are people that like red cattle. There are commercial people who like and respect red cattle but won't use them cause they don't want to introduce the red gene cause they might get a red calf on a cow carrying a red gene. Alot of times these calves get seperated in sale barns. I really think it is that simple. There are some awfull good Shorthorn cattle out there. I think when I die they will put something like"He raised red catlle for 50 years and he was never appreciated" on my tombstone. There is no doubt in my mind there are red bulls that get passed up every year for lessor black bulls. This has driven the Shorthorn to the showring to survive and flourish. I'm 50 years old. I don't know if the color barrier will ever be broken down. I think as far as market share is concerned maybe 10 years.20 years. I think my hope is that the black hide may get to the point where it means absolutely nothing. When black doesn't mean a thing anymore. When black cattle represent Simmental,Limousin,Gelbvieh,Maine Anjou, and these black cattle actually grade worse than Red Angus or Shorthorn the wall will come down. I think the only way to break into the Black market is to excell as a herd of red cattle so high that you can't be ignored. That means winning carcass trials or bull test stations or whatever. Thats what stirs the anger in the breed. Thats the fustration of the deal...I think. There are some awfull good Black Angus cattle out there. It is a damn tough market out there. The shorthorn cattle are wrong color. It is very frustrating. Seems like every breed in the world goes back to shorthorn cattle. Yet we are the wrong color. Unless we come up with some kinda niche to fill like grass fed cattle. Or ride on the Red Angus band wagon somehow....our commercial upside is limited I'm not smart enough to jump into the black hided deal. I'm to damn stubborn. But as a bussiness model how smart is raising red cattle right now? I'm just saying.

 

[mark tenenbaum]

After much thought with myself..........I am rolloing my pant legs up and going to work again. I wanted to throw in the towel with the shortie breed for a moment but if I got to prove it over the next few years, decades, lifetime, then I will. Crack on aj all you want, he is working harder at this then most of you. Take a good long look at the Rob Sneed catalog, I bet you will never see another one. Obvioisly the shorthorn breed is perfect and there is no need for change. Lets keep that 2% share in the cattle industry going strong. Seems to be working out great so far. :  IMO breeders like Rob will never be appreciated until they are long gone and then its to late. I raise a glass to that man. How many of you folks that actually have money to spend even gave that sale a second thought? Shame on you. You wouldnt know a good thing if it came up and bit you in the ass. I use his genetics and they are the real deal. How come thats not cool? Instead hair, bone, freeky front ends are. NOT LONGEVITY! NOT FERTILITY! NOT CARCASS! Oh what the hell do I know.

/// Just keep doing what you are doing-personally-I think retained ownership would prove alot of points-there should be a couple of feedlots geared for the outcrowd cattle-and the proof is in the carcass-then the greedy middle men could kiss my a#$%%^&&**s O0

 

[aj]

I heard second hand about data that some Texas university had that did a test on actual color and grading choice deal. It was 50%....colored cattle vs black cattle. Thats the kinda deal that could be promoted. I know of a salebarn that cuts the non-black cattle off, sells them at a cheaper price and actually buys the cattle themselves. It is almost a cottage industry that has been developed. I tried hauling the cattle to a salebarn 60 miles further down the road and they actually treated me as a human being. So maybe direct selling or maintained ownership is the way to go. Locker beef or whatever.

 

[justintime]

I heard second hand about data that some Texas university had that did a test on actual color and grading choice deal. It was 50%....colored cattle vs black cattle. Thats the kinda deal that could be promoted. I know of a salebarn that cuts the non-black cattle off, sells them at a cheaper price and actually buys the cattle themselves. It is almost a cottage industry that has been developed. I tried hauling the cattle to a salebarn 60 miles further down the road and they actually treated me as a human being. So maybe direct selling or maintained ownership is the way to go. Locker beef or whatever.

aj... don't fall over. I totally agree with you on this black conspiracy that is totally man made and has nothing to substantiate why it should even exist. I think this is a much bigger deal in the US and here in Canada it is slowly dieing a natural death. I had to drive for about 4 hours today and was actually thinking about this as I drove and I saw yoru post when I got home. What started me thinking about this was we have had more inquiries for roan and white bulls than red bulls so far for our bull sale. In fact we have had almost twice as many inquuiries for roan bulls than we have roan bulls to sell. I was thinking someone may have to change to a red bull or find a roan someplace else if they all stay interested until sale time. Here in Canada, at least around these parts, roan calves are not discounted if they are quality calves, in fact good roan calves can top the market on any given day. I think that part of the reason for this is that roan calves usually means they are British or at least British cross. Black can mean most anything anymore. As a result of this, more and more people are wanting to try to raise some roan calves. There is also a phemon here right now for blue roan females and there a pretty huge market for them if we could find them.
I was also thinking about when my dad and I decided to quit feeding cattle and solely concentrate on our purebred herd. We had no sooner made this decision when we were contacted by a group of order buyers and asked if we would assemble feeder cattle and test them for export. We decided we would do this for a few months as it sounded like some decent money. These feeder cattle were all being purchased by US feed lots and it was NOT Canadians sending cattle into the US to sell. We were paid for our feed and a chute and processing fee of $3 per head. Most of the help was provided by the order buyers so we had no extra labor costs. In 3 months we processed 10,500 head and they were usually here for 3-6 days depending on whether they had to be TB tested or not. These cattle were sent from here to feedlot buyers in Texas, Kansas, and Nebraska mainly, b ut a few loads were sent to Louisiana, Arizona and Iowa.  My point is that probably less than  10% of these cattle were black hided. I wish I had kept those records as we had to identify all the cattle with color, ear tag number and weight. It seems to me that if being black hided was of such monumental importance, they would have insisted on black cattle. I can only assume that they were wanting cattle that would grow and gain efficiently, and I would estimate that almost 2/3 of these cattle were tans or Charolais and Simmental cross cattle. We are seeing the same thimg right now here in our Candian feedlots. Canadian feedlots are packed full of American owned feeder cattle. Why is this? Simply because feed costs in Canada are about 20 cents a lb less than in the US at the present time. Feeding costs are so much lower here than American feeders have tried to purchase a number of Canadian feedlots in entirity. This also proves to me that another myth has no legs to stand on .This myth is that we do not have a North American  marketplace in the beef industry. Usually if you follow the money you will find your answers. Many of the cattle liners of fat cattle heading to the US for slaughter are actually American owned cattle .... and there are lots of them that are not black hided. Personally I think there are a bunch of order buyers who have plain and simply become far too lazy. If they got paid a premium for buying cattle that made the feeder money, I bet you would see some of them starting to bid up some other cattle than just black hided. Why is it that our US owned Cargill packers in Canada, pay premiums based on carcass quality regardless of their color?   Canada has the CAB program just as the US has. These Canadian packers also send much of this beef to the US...and it was not Angus beef. Seems to me, there has been a pile of wool pulled over a lot of eyes.

 

[Doc]

  Wasn't there an ad in maybe the '60's than had the message to the effect "If you used a Shorthorn bull you wouldn't have to wonder what's insidethat plain brown grocery bag" . It had a pic a Shorthorn bull & a brown paper grocery bag. Of course that was before the days of plastic bags. lol.
I also sold a bull to a guy one time that  chose a spotted up bull over a solid red one because he said he didn't want to have to tag the calves, but he wanted to tell them apart.

 

[garybob]

After much thought with myself..........I am rolloing my pant legs up and going to work again. I wanted to throw in the towel with the shortie breed for a moment but if I got to prove it over the next few years, decades, lifetime, then I will. Crack on aj all you want, he is working harder at this then most of you. Take a good long look at the Rob Sneed catalog, I bet you will never see another one. Obvioisly the shorthorn breed is perfect and there is no need for change. Lets keep that 2% share in the cattle industry going strong. Seems to be working out great so far. :  IMO breeders like Rob will never be appreciated until they are long gone and then its to late. I raise a glass to that man. How many of you folks that actually have money to spend even gave that sale a second thought? Shame on you. You wouldnt know a good thing if it came up and bit you in the ass. I use his genetics and they are the real deal. How come thats not cool? Instead hair, bone, freeky front ends are. NOT LONGEVITY! NOT FERTILITY! NOT CARCASS! Oh what the hell do I know.

Hey, um. You forgot Fescue Endophyte Fungus (Ergovaline, actually) Tolerance.

GB

 

[mark tenenbaum]

Well-JIT-being a destroyed millionaire-it seems to me that the cattle deal in Canada makes alot more sense than some other places-Id come up and be an expatriot field man or something, all I have left is a little cattle sense and a love for all good cattle.Im not much for the cold-but been in Minn,and North Dakota in .I did finally have an interview with a not very bright city yuppie-who asked me why I didnt want to be immersed in the panache of a city like Washington Dc-I replied-(TRUTH)-"Because I have a minor prediliction for certain farm animals"-He said-Really I dont quite follow you"-I replied-:"If you promise to keep things strictly confidential-I like to Scr#$^^&**W pigs." Had to be there-had to be from our culture perse-farmers are farmers-in every corner of the globe. (lol) O0

 

[nate53]

Anything that is mostly black qualifies for CAB on the grid, no matter what breed it is! We have hauled some holsteins for a neighbor that have qualified for CAB, merely because they were mostly black.  The ironic part of CAB is that Red Angus don't qualify for it because of color.  Now all black hided cattle don't actually go CAB just whatever has the quality.  Here's some numbers, right now for prime the premium is 20 dollars per hundredweight, choice is only worth 91 cents per hundredweight over select, and CAB is worth 3.15 cents per hundred.  So choice, select spread is basically nothing, so if you can't get to prime might as well sell a select.

 

[justintime]

Well-JIT-being a destroyed millionaire-it seems to me that the cattle deal in Canada makes alot more sense than some other places-Id come up and be an expatriot field man or something, all I have left is a little cattle sense and a love for all good cattle.Im not much for the cold-but been in Minn,and North Dakota in .I did finally have an interview with a not very bright city yuppie-who asked me why I didnt want to be immersed in the panache of a city like Washington Dc-I replied-(TRUTH)-"Because I have a minor prediliction for certain farm animals"-He said-Really I dont quite follow you"-I replied-:"If you promise to keep things strictly confidential-I like to Scr#$^^&**W pigs." Had to be there-had to be from our culture perse-farmers are farmers-in every corner of the globe. (lol) O0

Mark... there are lots of things here in Canada that don't make sense either. My main point is that there appears to be two sets of rules being set by American feeders and packers. If they are feeding  or buying feeder cattle in Canada they don't seem to stress the black hided thing as much as they do in the US... at least that is what it seems like to me.  It just seems to me that the only thing they want when they buy or feed up here is they want cattle that will feed efficiently and grade efficiently, and in short, be profitable for them. If that is indeed the case, then why do they discount cattle that are not black hided when they buy in the US? Something in this, just does not make sense to me. That is all I am saying.It almostrseems to me that the packers and buyers are just trying to make their jobs easier, so they can buy cattle almost blindfolded. I know it is much deeper than this, but this black thing does not make sense. I have no problem with the good black hided cattle getting a premium. They should get it, but so should the other colored cattle that hang as good a quality product on the rail. The highest premium ever paid by US owned Cargill in Canada was for a set of 100+ red and roan Shorthorn steers. I have often wondered if the meat from those steers was consumed in Canada or in the US??? I hope I live long enough to see this mess corrected. It is nothing more than discrimination ... and I think you people in the US have a little history with dealing with discrimination in a few other areas. Sorry... this black hided crap really starts to make me mad if I think about it too long. Production of good nutritious beef for a nation is sooo much more than the color of the hide it comes in.

 

[aj]

Dittos to JIT

 

[trevorgreycattleco]

This is what I want folks to think about. When Robs cattle show up at the feeder or packer, they make money, good money. Isnt that what we are all after? His cows live a long time, are easy keeping, easy calving cattle. They are not the end all be all all. They are just a very useful tool in the tool box. I just had a 5 frame red angus x shorthorn durham red heifer calve to 329 yesterday. Personally I enjoy a virgin heifer calving out a 70 lb heifer unassited and find the calf up and nursing. My calf puller has cobwebs and rust on it. Call me dumb I guess. 


Watched the 5L Red Angus bull sale on RFD TV today......those red bulls sure sold good. HMMMM
Must be somebody out there wanting to use red bulls.

 

[nate53]

So why not join up with some other breeders and feed a group out and sell them on the grid and see how they do?  There is a very mimimal advantage to the black on the grid.  We stopped selling calves years ago and now only sell on the grid, most of the time it is worth it, if you feed them yourselves and raise your own feed.

Trevor, what you mentioned about Rob's cattle is the reason why I purchased a bull last year from him to mix with our black angus.  Our black angus are doing exceptional on the grid and I think the reds can help us on the dociltiy. 

 

[justintime]

I like raising cattle but I sometimes think how much more fun it would be if everyone could just raise the best critter they know how to produce and they get paid for simple quality? Rather than  what we have now where it matters if it has white markings and where the markings are located, and it matters what the prefix on the great grandmother's pedigree is, and where black hair trumps all other quality factors. In my dream world, everyone would agree to call a good animal good even if it didn't work in their environment and management. If everyone could do this, we would all be free to use the best animals we could find for our situation, and everyone would still call the good ones good.   Now please would everyone be quiet for a few minutes, as I really want to enjoy this dream as long as I can before I wake up!  

 

[Eggbert]

Much of this thread seems to be a quarrel about who is producing the “right-kind” of Shorthorn cattle.  In one corner it is those who believe that they are most profitable by having a herd of 5-frame cows and in the other corner those that don’t.  In my opinion, both may be right.  The ideal cow size will vary according the environment and production system.  

Read this article about cow size and efficiency…it summarizes the issue extremely well.

http://www.beefusa.org/uDocs/2010%20NCBA%20Cow%20Efficiency%20_Final_.pdf

As the article states…it is a bit of puzzle.  A cow-calf producer may select for smaller framed cattle assuming that they are more efficient, but when they go to market their cattle may be discounted because feeder cattle buyers and packers prefer larger framed cattle.  

So in the cow-calf segment, smaller framed cattle may be more profitable, however, it seems that larger framed cattle are more efficient and profitable in feedlots (and are preferred by packers).

 

[Eggbert]

I like raising cattle but I sometimes think how much more fun it would be if everyone could just raise the best critter they know how to produce and they get paid for simple quality? Rather than  what we have now where it matters if it has white markings and where the markings are located, and it matters what the prefix on the great grandmother's pedigree is, and where black hair trumps all other quality factors. In my dream world, everyone would agree to call a good animal good even if it didn't work in their environment and management. If everyone could do this, we would all be free to use the best animals we could find for our situation, and everyone would still call the good ones good.   Now please would everyone be quiet for a few minutes, as I really want to enjoy this dream as long as I can before I wake up!  

justintime - you submitted your post as I was developing mine.  It seems like we are on the same page.  That is exactly why I post the article regarding cow size and efficiency - a "good" animal varies according to the situation.