Canceled fall sales

[stick]

Just did a quick look through of the August Shorthorn Country and saw at least 2 fall sales that have been canceled, more than likely because of the drought. Is this happening in other breeds also?

 

[JSchroeder]

It happened last year in Texas with three sales I know of in various breeds.  Only one of them had a sale again this year.

 

[justintime]

I expect the size of the drought area will affect some peoples decisions whether they hold their sales or not. The good cattle always seem to bring good dollars but the others can get hit hard.
In my case, one of the best sales I ever had was in one of the worst droughts we ever experienced here. I debated about cancelling the sale, but in the end decided that I needed to sell down as we did not have pasture or feed for all the cattle we had. I fully expected we would have a tough sale, however the exact opposite happened. The drought that year was much smaller than what the Midwest US has seen this year and we had some buyers looking for numbers of cattle. I remember I had offered shipping anywhere in the US or Canada for no more than $100 per head. When the dust had settled, I only had 1 animal that cost more than the $100/ head to truck it, and that one was to a Prince Edward Island buyer. He asked me if I would consider giving him 10 straws of semen in lieu of what I owed him. There was a complete full pot load of cattle to Colorado and Kansas and the trucking bill worked out to $90/ head . I got lucky! As I said the sale was a success and averaged $3200 which was excellent in those days.

 

[trevorgreycattleco]

I was just in Indiana. It's brutally dry there. I'm thinking the cows look rough and ww are nowhere close to what they could be. I have never seen drought that bad. It looked like a round up bomb went off. Everything was dead or dying. If there ever was a good year to just get through, this is it.

 

[OKshorthorn]

We are taking 2 heifers and a bull calf to the sale barn this weekend, would have probably kept them at the farm but we are already feeding hay. Didn't get a single cutting last year because of a lousy drought, and had to buy hay after using the last that we had leftover, only got 1 cut of hay this spring and starting to feed this early we will run out for sure. Sucks. 

 

[bryan6807]

thoughts and prayers to the areas hit hardest this year.