buyer's signals

[Jake]

95% of the time at any barn the auctioneer is going to start at a floor and go from there. The majority of the time if you see them have to back off a nickel or a dime it is on a cheater or a group of "trader" stock. Unless there is an artificial floor set by the barn these cattle will find their market value but the likely hood of that being the same as the other 95% of the cattle is highly unlikely. The quickest way for a barn to loose buyers is to start inflating prices on junk cattle.

[xbred]

sometimes the auctioneer or whoever is staring the calf may miss something on the cow or calf..nothing decitful...at other times our local salebarn owner is pressured by local sellers to start their "good stock" at whatever, and he does start the animal at what the seller asked him to..if he can't get it he drops his call to sell the animal....do big deal...happens all the time...

[dun]

Doesn;t bother me if they start and theb back up a little. What bothers me is the bidding that is suuposedly going on and then he drops it back to below the start price.

[AngusLimoX]

How many times does the barn start off at 90, no bids, back to 80 and the freakin animal sells at 95?

It is the way Jake says around here.

[stocky]

My posts didn't have anything to do with junk, trader, or cheater cattle or inflating prices. Those are the cattle where a crooked auctioneer will set them in too high in order to try to hang someone and then back off until he can unload them. It is another example of why backing off is not professional and leads to not being able to trust the barn.
What I am talking about is that on any given day, a slaughter cow is worth a certain amount delivered to the slaughter plant. A feedlot calf is worth a certain amount delivered to the feedlot. That is the end price and several people have to make money on that animal from the time it is unloaded at the sale barn until it is delivered to the final destination. No one in that line is going to pay more than they have to for that animal because it cuts into their profit. You may have 4 sales in the area where the prices are the same and one barn has a huge run that day and has 1,000 more calves than buyers, or the buyers couldnt get there because of weather. In cases like that, if the sale barn owner does not support the price on the cattle, the buyers will break the market and get the cattle as cheap as possible. The people who get hurt the most are the smaller producer who doesnt have enough calves to match up large groups. I have seen buyers break those calves 20 dollars per hundred at a bad sale barn.
The cows to go back to the farm have a base set by shippers, then the local buyers make the market at that barn that day, because they have to outbid the shippers, so they can set a real high market if the local demand is there. You will see a much more drastic swing from barn to barn or day to day on cows to go back to the farm than on slaughter cows or feeder calves because of local buyers.
My point is that if you do not have a barn to sell at that supports the real market on the cattle, you can't be sure of getting a fair price. I spend way too much time and money and work on my cattle just to let a buyer put an extra 10 dollars per hundred in his pocket, and out of mine, just because I didn't protect my money.

[backhoeboogie]

All of which justifies the desire to sell at certain barns, and buy at others.

[Jake]

stocky with that explanation I can see what your saying. This is the difference between good barns and not so good barns. I did not get that from what you had been saying before. Sorry for being stubborn, I still have some issues with some of your arguements but I think it's time to let this dog lie down.