We Sold the Calves!!

hi i'm mike and it's what most people call the most exciting day on the ranch we take the kids out of school and we all head to sales day come along and join us today on our wyoming life [Music] do hi guys welcome back and thanks for joining us in 2021 this is our wyoming life and behind us uh they're just finishing loading up the truck that's going to take our calves that we spent 2020 raising and calving and all that kind of good stuff off to auction and we're going to take you along with us today as we hit the road we're going to hit belfooch livestock exchange today we're going to get a little bit of behind-the-scenes uh access as we get a chance to look around and see what happens behind the auction and how the whole thing happens we're going to get a chance to talk to the owner his name is baxter really great guy and we're going to hit the road here in just a few minutes the cavs are all loaded up erin's here uh she gave us a hand with uh with loading and of course kachina and her husband sean uh are truck drivers today so we're gonna hit the road and uh we'll see you uh somewhere in between here and belle foosh hopefully open gates okay cool cows out okay like cows out throw kids in the car [Music] go drive the same roads every day [Music] we both get there our wrong way this is tree how different two souls can be all right now it's a little bit uh calmer we've got uh the truck is behind us now and we as a family are heading over to the belfooch livestock exchange i remember when gilbert was alive and we would go to the auction and we would all go as like a family and i think a lot of uh farmers and ranchers end up doing this it becomes like a family excursion to go and sell calves i mean it's the it's the one paycheck of a year of the year it's a super exciting day the kids are in the back they get to uh not go to school today hi guys hi how are you can i ask you what's your favorite part about uh selling calves taking a nap it's boring and i just like taking that what about you gracie [Music] yep camera shy what about you lincoln the excitement is just oozing out of the truck i can't i can't i can barely even stand it they like to miss school they don't so much like the drive and like i get it as a kid it's not super exciting to sit at the sales ring and but i last year was the first year that we'd taken all of them like i don't know we always just one of us kind of stayed home or when we had like little kids i think we took mckenzie when she was pretty small like a couple times right i think once we entered into like multiple children we kind of took a few years where we didn't all go as a family so uh yeah they get to skip school it is family family tradition i think to go to the sales party so i think and it's important for them to see this too like hopefully one of them will continue to ranch and they're going to have to sell calves and so i want them to have a lifetime of experience plus we just like to torture him a little bit so we are going to head into belfoush uh the truck is like i said is not far behind us and then we're going to track down the owner of bel belfouche livestock exchange say that 10 times really fast we're going to track down the owner uh he's hopefully he's going to give us a behind-the-scenes look at how things work at the sales bar we're going to sell our calves hopefully we get a good price this year we ended up holding back our cabs usually we would have sold back in october this is the second year that we've actually weaned calves off and and fattened them up a little bit before we take them so the sales mart actually stops selling calves after right around christmas time they take a little bit break into the new year and our hope is that when they return like now uh the buyers are are anxious to buy calves and hopefully price is a little bit higher and we can see a little bit more profit off our camps but we don't know uh it's all a gamble it's a it's the auction system so we don't know what what's gonna happen uh but we'll know before too long so stick around next stop is belfooch livestock exchange [Music] together till the end [Music] [Music] foreign all right our truck has arrived sean is here to unload our calves they're right here inside this truck looks like they had a pretty nice ride hey guys [Music] so now all the calves are unloaded uh the next thing that we're gonna do is we're still looking for baxter i'm not sure where he's at uh but we're gonna go here and we're just gonna kind of wander around until we get kicked out this is where the calves move into [Music] hey i found him this is baxter anders baxter you uh you are the proprietor here at uh belfooze livestock exchange yeah and how long have you been doing this i've owned belle cruz for going on four years now and do you like do you like the business do you like being in this in this portion of the business i love this business yeah yeah i really like it it seems to be uh working really well for you guys look busy uh we managed to get a few drone shots flying over and it's amazing when you get a chance to look at this from the top down because it doesn't look that big and how many pens are out here how many different sorting pens do you have oh i don't know hundreds out days we here most all of our pins have feeding water except for in yard back where they come out of the ring gotcha and uh i don't know i mean there's a lot uh it's hard to keep track of all of it it is there's we got there's about 10 different alleys and i'd say every alley has 20 to 30 pins so okay so the basic process is they unload just like we saw and then they come down here and they start right away as soon as they're coming off the truck they're counting them you've got a brand inspector there that's making sure that you own these cattle what happens after that what's the next step well after they come off the truck and they get counted and they get brand inspected then they go over to sorting alley okay and uh we gotta we got crews that sex the calves uh which means steer and effort and then from there they go to the sorting alley where they go into the ring at the sorting alley they'll size them big little black red whatever they got to do to make them sell the best all these guys out here sorting they understand what it takes to make them bring top dollar and that's how they sort them is how many people are out here and to make this happen how many people do you know in most given days there's from 20 to 50 people oh my god you know i don't we you know mostly ranchers in the area kind of work help on sale day for extra income and stuff too so you get volunteers that people just want to come out and be a part of this yeah nobody ever volunteers they always want i get it i get it so so this is the this is this is where the sorting starts to take place and then of course um they know which which pen belongs to which which owner and all that kind of good stuff and then uh inside is when they go into the sales bar is there a reason that that's actually a covered area then um just an outdoor cover is at one point a reason you know i it's just we just called the chef going right into the ring okay if there's any final touch-ups to the sort and they'll be done in there but that's where the cattle after they're sort of they're pushed into the shed and then they're pushed into the ring from there awesome can we go in and take a look yeah yep have you found the uh the business to be changing with technology or i mean obviously uh you know auction bar and sales rings have been around for a hundred years i mean do you do you think do you see things changing in the future for the way this is done there's a lot of internet bidding and stuff like that and uh people that do it that way but but the old legends that are in the business they come to the sale they value the cattle on the spot according to their way up and the kind of cattle that they are right [Music] we call it stacking up you know according to the order that they're going to sell in the heavy end of the steers will sell first so they'll go in the front pin right into the steers and according on the heifer so gotcha there's kind of a routine they have all these guys they do this every night they got it down so where is this where's the actual ring from here it's way up in that corner right white doors can we get there from here or do we have to we've probably got a lot of gates to go through once the cams have made it this far they're sorted by weight and size and color and condition and now it's time for their shot in the spotlight as they head into the sales rings um and soon enough the first of our own cattle enter the fray 74.75 [Music] ready all right let's stop it right there a lot of stuff just happened in 25 seconds in fact in a weird way our entire year just settled up in 25 seconds those were the best uh prices that we had of the day you can see right here there's 20 cows were sold total weight of 10 470 pounds average weight 524 this was the best price that we got of the day which was a dollar 77 price per head 9 26 59 that's before they take out all the fees and that kind of stuff and of course the buyer that purchased them we did sell more cattle obviously none of our prices were actually this good but this was the best price that we got which is actually about uh 10 or 15 cents less than what we got last year so you can see that the economy and everything like that is affecting the cattle market but we're happy with what we got the problem is that it's never enough any rancher will tell you that so coming up in future videos we're going to talk about where this money goes and and what happens after that all right back to the video we're going to join baxter as he takes us to where the cows just exited the cavs exited and what happens to him after that has anybody figured out the uh the magic recipe for something that brings a good price you know what buyers are looking for yeah the magic recipe is quality and consistency gotcha a lot of people are always looking to you know change and i guess i'm an advocate for change but but quality and because consistency is always going to be what brings the most amount of money so if you can condense like your calving season down so they're the same size you don't have a big spread same size same color i mean you want to you want to try to merchandise your battle in a bigger bunch because you can i mean whether you're a producer that's 50 head or 500 head you want you want to sell them as few of bunches as you can you know it just is a good way to merchandise in bigger bunches right makes sense [Music] so this is where they come out okay and all these pins are our dry pins right here that we are back in in these kettle they sit here until after the sale okay and uh by six o'clock tomorrow morning whatever's left we're putting back on feeding water okay there's a crow's nest up there and uh they're calling number pin numbers so these guys out here know what you can do they know where to put them gotcha and so most of these cattle will they be on a truck today and out of here yeah most of them will be and where they where do they where do they go after here uh destination a feed lot somewhere gotcha i may be back to a ranch but mostly most of these cattle today go to a feedlot [Music] how many calves usually go through here on a calf day you know this time of year most of our sales will be from you know 2500 to 5000 head this time of year in the fall we'll get eight nine ten thousand you know it'll be big in the fall from from about the first of october to the end of december it stays pretty consistent so gotcha well that's really cool i thank you for letting us come out and kind of walk through how the whole system works and obviously from here they're on to trucks uh feedlots then processors distributors and eventually grocery stores so you're an important part of that just as any producer is or anything like that but sale barns play a big role in the beef chain i guess right exactly well thank you sir i appreciate it yeah thank you take her easy you too don't work too hard so there we go our calves are sold aaron brought the kids out and they're out they took i think they took bean for a walk i'm not sure where exactly they went so i got to track them down and we'll touch base with aaron and see what she thought of the sail and and uh and we'll hit the road we'll get back home and and basically we're going to go do it all over again calving starts here in just a couple months and we'll be raising another crop of calves to be able to bring over here and also sell directly to consumers uh through the farm store and everything else we got going on so we got our money it's time to run so what did you uh what'd you think uh went much faster this year yeah very very long i mean yeah it's nice to have a sales time and actually sell at that time that's amazing it's always extremely hot in sales springs for some reason so hot because there's yeah well there's a lot of movement in people and i'd rather have it warm than sit in there and freeze i guess they definitely have a smell to them too there's like a mixture of cow and like b.o and in 1970s there is the 1970s thing i should have brought that up with baxter i i asked him i you know i asked him if uh you know if there's technology coming forward you know and how technology is changing sales barns and stuff like that i should have asked him if he was going to get new carpet [Laughter] it's all good no it's good i think we um i think we did as well as expected in the current cattle market um yeah and just not having to wait just makes the experience just so much better so exactly yeah bill fusch took care of us this year and yeah let's go home let's go home as you may have noticed this video is brought to you by fbn they are a new channel sponsor that we're working with here uh in order to actually help out farmers and ranchers fbn is available you can check out their link down in the description also fbn is hiring they're hiring nutrition consultants they're hiring uh they're hiring dealers if you're interested in working with fbn uh be sure to check them out there's a link down in the description once again so just click on that and and get all the good information there for you so that's pretty much it for today we're happy to be back up and running our wyoming life will be uh new videos on tuesdays and thursdays you can check two yeah fridays tuesdays and fridays maybe thursday whatever you can uh you can actually check us out on the beyond the ranch channel too that's going to be on sunday night so check that out as well thank you guys for hanging out with us be sure to subscribe like hit all the buttons go to facebook do all that kind of good stuff hi mackenzie hi you want to say the ending part do you remember what it is it's been a while um thanks for joining us thanks for joining us in our wyoming life in our wyoming life there you go thanks guys

Channel: Our Wyoming Life

Views: 136,456

Rating: 4.9637022 out of 5

Keywords: Ranch, cow, cows, horses, cowboy, gardening, farmers market, Wyoming, our Wyoming life, animals, animal videos, peacock, farming, planting, cattle, ranching, ranch life, sales barn, selling calves, cattle auction

Id: Mlt9hxrdyC8

Length: 19min 49sec (1189 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 22 2021