Delivering the sale cattle

The last few weeks we have spent all our free time delivering the sale cattle.  It is a big job but is really inspiring to visit our new and old customers.  We now have 75% of them at their new homes and in the next few weeks should have the job all wrapped up.  We are officially sold out, but do have a small pen of very good spare bulls ready to go to work if one of our sale bulls doesn’t work out for any reason.

Part of the fun of delivering is seeing how our bulls are doing 1 year or many years later.  We have customers that purchased one bull on our first sale, and are now purchasing four and bringing their neighbours who are also becoming customers.   In the last 6 years we have been the largest growing bull supplier in Canada and the only way that happens is satisfied customers. 

A pen of JL herd bulls at J5.  J5 have purchased over 60 bulls in our first 6 sales and almost all of them were in this pen. 

Starting to work for the 2014 sale

We started breeding heifers this week, and the breeding decisions we make in the next month will set the stage for our 2014 bull sale. 

We are very happy with the set of calves we have on the ground right now.  Mostly Eliminators, Bullets, Brand Names and Four Seasons.  So we are continuing to breed hard with Eliminator, Bullet and Four Seasons, as well as our new Rito 1439, and Mountain Top.

On Tuesday we ran all 130 heifers through the chute and put on estrus alerts as well as gave them a shot of estramate.  By tonight, Friday night, we have 70 head bred.  For the next week we should have very few heats.  Later next week we will estramate them again and should have bred all the heifers once by the following Monday.  At that point 60-70% of them should be bred and we can turn them out with one of the herd bulls.

We are warming up the herd bulls by hand breeding heifers to them each day.  They really become much more efficient breeders when they know they only have a few minutes to get the job done. 

By starting breeding this week the first calf should be due January 13.  With these Angus genetics we will be lucky if they hold off until January 1.  Most calve 5-6 days early but a few will be up to two weeks early. 

We hope to start on the cows sometime next week.  Have a lot of setting up to do before that as we are still not sure where we should do it.  A lot will depend on the weather in the next few days.  It looks like we could be in for a bunch of snow.

Sale day in photos

A few photos from the sale.  Not only does my beautiful wife run the sale office, our office, and our home but she is also a very talented photographer and runs Laurie Ann Photography and a Home on the Prairies.

Hard to believe its all over

Well its over and what a day it turned out to be.  Weather wise it was perfect with a nice sunny warm day with light winds.  We had the cattle penned by 9:30 and that is when the crowd started to arrive.  We fed about 300 for lunch and at sale time our barn was overflowing. 

Here is a brief summary.  I will try get a complete one on here in the next couple weeks.

                                                                Gross                          Average

151 Yearling Bulls                              $583,450                     $3,864

4 Embryo Lots                                    $11,150                       $2,788

26 Heifer Calves                                 $115,900                     $4,458

181 Lots                                              $710,500                     $3,925

 

High Selling Yearling Bulls

Lot 15Y – JL Open Season 1015 sold for $12,000 to Craig Angus, Tompkins, Sk.

 

Lot 181Y – JL Upward 181Y sold for $9,000 to Dwajo Angus, Camp Creek, Ab.

 

Lot 9Y – JL All Answers 1009 sold for $7,750 to Gabel Angus, Regina, Sk.

 

High Selling Open Angus Heifers

Lot 308Y – JL Evening Tinge 1308 sold for $13,500 to Justin Eubank, Indiana, USA

 

Lot 301Y – JL Erica 1301 sold for $8,500 to Corey Jones, Melita, MB.

 

Lot460Y – JL Evening Tinge 1460 sold for $7,750 to Brad Gilchrist, Lucknow, Ont.

 

Lot 70Y – JL June 1070 sold for $7,750 to Adrian Rehorst

We couldn’t have put on an event like this without the support of our family and friends that have helped us out all week and especially today.  Also our customer base which helped us have an extremely successful 6th Annual sale.  We didn’t sell completely out as the last few years as we did pass one bull, but to sell 30 more bulls than last year was incredible.  Thanks so much.

Sale Order

Thankfully we are back up and running with cell service, landlines & internet.  Hopefully it all stays in normal working order tomorrow!

If for some reason you can’t get a hold of Andrew, try texting as this seemed to work intermittently during the outage. 306-736-7393

Here is the sale order.  Have a great night and look forward to seeing everyone tomorrow.