Pre-sort sales are a great option for people that don't calve 200 plus cows. I want to get there, and I WILL have consistent cattle, but right now as we are re-building a herd; the numbers aren't there for me to have a truck-load lot of MY cattle going through the ring in one group.
Don't be nice on pre-sort sales because you don't need them. They are a valuable tool for a percentage of producers for various reasons.
BTW, there will ALWAYS be calves of two colours on our operation. We develop our own F1s in-house, which means there will be a bunch of "cull" red steers every year. The top-notch calves will be the buck-skins out of the commercial herd, but there will be a group of "off" coloured calves to sell each year.
A rainbow herd is one thing, but a designed program that has some cast-offs along the way is quite another.