I am on the MHA board and we just had ours on November 16th. We had just over 1,000 (2/3 straight hereford) head consigned. About half (500) followed our specs being age and source verified with EID tags, weaned for 45 days with 2 rounds of shots and the other half were backgrounded however the consigners wanted and some bawling. The calves that fit our program brought roughly $80/hd premium over the non program calves. You need to get enough calves verified and backgrounded that way to get buyers there. Pretty successful. One guy said his baldie heifers brought 3cents/cwt less at Pays in Billings the same week as his straight hereford heifers did at our sale. The MHA got a "Montana Made" matching fund grant and we paid a $5/hd rebate towards freight getting the calves to Three forks. Hoping to get set up on DVAUCTION for next year and also maybe have another sale in Miles City. We also paid travel expenses/ motel room / meals for buyers.