That's what we did. We used the highs from the better sale in the area that we hauled to. If we delivered on Tuesday, we took the Friday sale before and the Friday sale after to get an avg. It was always close and we were trying to make it work, not argue over pennies.My idea would be that we average the #1 prices for the last month from the Lampasas Cattle Auction, Coryell County Auction and maybe one other around central Texas and go with the average of the averages of their #1 ranges. Don't really want to go with the futures market, as it seems to be disconnected with the cash market sometimes, but I'd be open to taking the 30 day average of the appropriate futures index, I guess.
Obviously there could be some holes in that plan but I never felt like they would manipulate any thing for price and vice-versa. Don't see it being an issue with your either.