Hereford influence sale

Since there’s been some folks on here questioning if there was Certified Hereford Beef (CHB). Yes, there is and we are planning on selling some calves in a Hereford influence sale in December.
The sale requires the calves be vaccinated and weaned etc similar to other special graded sales and with Hereford influence meeting CHB requirements.

It would change the entire industry if you could get a major grocery chain and/or restaurant chain to advertise Certified Hereford Beef. A little serious advertising would really help a lot of people and the industry as a whole.

Travlr said:

It would change the entire industry if you could get a major grocery chain and/or restaurant chain to advertise Certified Hereford Beef. A little serious advertising would really help a lot of people and the industry as a whole.

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It would but, for what ever reason the association seems to enjoy working against itself to its own detriment. There are many individual breeders that try to promote Hereford but seems like that’s as far as it gets. It really doesn’t help that many of the folks in the Hereford association are Angus breeders too.
Our vet is a longtime Hereford breeder here in the state and he has worked for several years on these Hereford influence sales. I was told a couple weeks ago that a local buyer that bought for feedlots had bought a load of calves from a previous Hereford influence sale and the outfit that he bought them for have requested more as they were very pleased with the results of those cattle.
Herefords got a bad reputation decades ago for cancer eye, bad udders, bad feet, you name it, and even though a lot of improvements have been made the stereotypes remain.
Reality is that Hereford cows are just as good as Angus cows. A lot of people know it, but a lot are stuck in the past and the numbers just haven’t rebounded, although for the last several years demand for Hereford females and bulls has really grown it’s still significantly behind in terms of being enough to fill massive orders of a branded beef program.
I’m hoping that it will continue to grow and be able to get in some grocery meat counters.

Ky hills said:

It would but, for what ever reason the association seems to enjoy working against itself to its own detriment. There are many individual breeders that try to promote Hereford but seems like that’s as far as it gets. It really doesn’t help that many of the folks in the Hereford association are Angus breeders too.
Our vet is a longtime Hereford breeder here in the state and he has worked for several years on these Hereford influence sales. I was told a couple weeks ago that a local buyer that bought for feedlots had bought a load of calves from a previous Hereford influence sale and the outfit that he bought them for have requested more as they were very pleased with the results of those cattle.
Herefords got a bad reputation decades ago for cancer eye, bad udders, bad feet, you name it, and even though a lot of improvements have been made the stereotypes remain.
Reality is that Hereford cows are just as good as Angus cows. A lot of people know it, but a lot are stuck in the past and the numbers just haven’t rebounded, although for the last several years demand for Hereford females and bulls has really grown it’s still significantly behind in terms of being enough to fill massive orders of a branded beef program.
I’m hoping that it will continue to grow and be able to get in some grocery meat counters.

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It'll never take off until you see it next to a package of CAB and it looks as good or better... and ten cents a pound cheaper. Angus got the jump on the "certified" market and no other breeds have gotten serious about competing even though CAB is the death of some of those breeds and is threatening all of them.

Here some of the CHB potential bound calves.
These BWF would also be CAB potential too.

Wife I have been talking about this sale this week. Kicking it around but is bit of a haul. She talked to L.W. this week. Thoughts from prior years? Feel free to p.m.

Only place I’ve seen CHB was at Gene’s in Minneapolis Kansas. It seemed to be good quality, I can’t remember if we tried it though.

Today is the day of the KY Hereford Influence graded feeder calf sale.
We took 6. 5 BWF steers and one BWF heifer.
We have 6 left at home to keep out of that group. We kept back 5 heifers and one steer. 3 more heifers and the steer could have went, but we have no idea if we’ll be sold out or not before another year so we have the steer for beef if we are still living here next fall, and the plan is to retain some heifers either way.

Ky hills said:

Today is the day of the KY Hereford Influence graded feeder calf sale.
We took 6. 5 BWF steers and one BWF heifer.
We have 6 left at home to keep out of that group. We kept back 5 heifers and one steer. 3 more heifers and the steer could have went, but we have no idea if we’ll be sold out or not before another year so we have the steer for beef if we are still living here next fall, and the plan is to retain some heifers either way.
View attachment 63771View attachment 63772

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Hope they do real good for you. There are alot of the bwf calves like that, that have "too much white" and they get discounted real bad.
Wonder if there are any other hereford influenced sales around closer... @kenny thomas know of any? Might be worth a trip if I was able to pick up some of these around here at good prices...wean and background... like we do with some of the angus calves.

farmerjan said:

Hope they do real good for you. There are alot of the bwf calves like that, that have "too much white" and they get discounted real bad.
Wonder if there are any other hereford influenced sales around closer... @kenny thomas know of any? Might be worth a trip if I was able to pick up some of these around here at good prices...wean and background... like we do with some of the angus calves.

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I dont know of any that are closer than that one.

farmerjan said:

Hope they do real good for you. There are alot of the bwf calves like that, that have "too much white" and they get discounted real bad.
Wonder if there are any other hereford influenced sales around closer... @kenny thomas know of any? Might be worth a trip if I was able to pick up some of these around here at good prices...wean and background... like we do with some of the angus calves.

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Thank you, we didn’t go to the sale, as our church had a Christmas Dinner get together at a Cracker Barrel at the same time as the sale. Since the calves are graded and comingled with other like calves we decided our presence at the sale wouldn’t be as necessary.
We have friends that work at the stockyards, and wife called the office the next day. Said the calves averaged $2300 something. I’ll post the breakdown of the sale bill when it comes through the mail,
I saw a partial breakdown of the groups and prices that somebody posted online.
I think I remember reading 557 head at the sale.
There is or at least used to be a Hereford influence sale in Tennessee, not sure of the location. Early on some of the folks from Ky participated in it and it was kind of a joint TN, KY sale.
Until a couple years ago, the KY sale was held in Stanford KY, about an hour south of here, but still probably the same or more distance from where you are.
I think they still have one there too, headed up by some local breeders, but the official KY Hereford sale is now in Lexington KY.
In years past there have been cattle brought in from West Virginia and Pennsylvania that I know of. Both those may have been registered breeders that were also bringing cattle to sell in the KY Hereford Association’s annual registered consignment sale and they brought there commercial end calves to sell at the graded feeder calf sale at the same time.

We took 14 mostly rednecks few bigger baldies to finish load. Worked out good took daughters steers to catch ride for Herford fed steer shoot out. There ride was only few miles from stock yard. Seemed well ran, big thanks to L.W. for making the sale happen.

littletom said:

We took 14 mostly rednecks few bigger baldies to finish load. Worked out good took daughters steers to catch ride for Herford fed steer shoot out. There ride was only few miles from stock yard. Seemed well ran, big thanks to L.W. for making the sale happen.

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Yes, we appreciate L.W. we were glad that he suggested the sale. We have two heifers that we are keeping out of a bull we got from him.

Any update on prices, and how they compared to your regular sale. If there is a premium it should attract more cattle next year.

mwj said:

Any update on prices, and how they compared to your regular sale. If there is a premium it should attract more cattle next year.

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I have not received our check with the breakdown and details. My wife called the stockyards office the next day and from what I understand our calves averaged $2300 something. She didn’t ask for specifics just got a total and that’s the average.
I copied a link from FB that I saw from somebody from the Hereford Association listing some of the groups and sale prices. 557 head.
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/17gTLvgGLz/?mibextid=wwXIfr

Here are our results and the total results from the sale.
Our calves all graded as #1 and were 8-9 months old. The heifer was smaller, and I didn’t want to retain her, but she sold good. The heifers we kept were probably close to 100# heavier than her.
It’s a good feeling seeing your calves actually be labeled as #1s and with the results of the beef calves we had processed a while back it lets me know we are doing things pretty well right. Always room for improvement but a good feeling nonetheless.

https://files.constantcontact.com/26569b37101/53da4792-4341-4fc2-837f-1221cf807640.pdf?rdr=true