This week I took some cows to the “new” salebarn in Wister, it’s called Poorboy Livestock Auction. The “old” salebarn is Leflore County Livestock auction. I do business with both of them, but this time I sold my cattle at Poorboy because it was on Friday and I’ve got family in this weekend. I didn’t want to be at the salebarn on Saturday, the LeFlore county salebarn has their sale every Saturday morning.
I sat in the stands and paid close attention to what different types of cattle were bringing. An old bull brought $1.70 per pound, he weighed 1630 pounds and was marked as 0 which means old. A 3 year old cow with a 300 pound calf, the cow was also bred back, brought $3500. It was interesting to me to watch what some of the top sellers were.
I had some good black cows with huge calves on their sides. The salebarn separated them. I had a couple of calves bring over fifteen hundred. A couple of the cows brought over two thousand, and they weren’t bred back. That works out to thirty five hundred per pair (cow+ her calf).
I’ve sold some high dollar horses over the years. I guess I can say I’ve sold some high dollar cows now. For several years I always budgeted my farm on selling a four hundred dollar calf. It was just maybe five years ago I upped my budget to a five hundred dollar calf.
I hope the cow/ calf market stays up. My great uncle told me in the 1960s he could take ten calves to the salebarn and they would bring enough money to buy a brand new pickup. Even as high as the calf market is right now, I don’t know of a pickup you can buy for twenty thousand, which is about what ten top selling calves will bring in the current market.
It was a good day to be at the salebarn. I visited with several friends and ate some good food. As I drove home I remembered all the calves the old number 41 cow raised over the years. She was one of the ones I sold. She had to be at least fifteen years old.
I always liked watching her, she was a gorgeous black brangus type cow. She was very protective of her calves, she never lost one and had a calf every year. She would lead half the calves away from the lot at times, but she was so pretty and produced such good calves I always kind of forgave her when it came time to wean calves.
I was happy with the check I had in my pocket, but also kind of sad. I sure like those big pretty cows that have a calf every year. It was kind of sad letting some of them older cows go. Ecclesiastes 3 says there’s a time for all things, a time to plant and a time to harvest. God must have been a farmer…….
James Lockhart lives near the Kiamichi mountains in southeast Oklahoma. He writes cowboy stories and fools with cows and horses.