Thanks, guys.
We have Presort Sales up here...So no...the different colours don't really matter too much. Spots and roans will get docked, unless they are Tan/grey, the buyers don't really care then. Big calves 600 lbs and up, don't get hit too hard either.
Those are pretty much all the really coloured calves we have. Most are solid coloured, or with a white or brf.
We run red and black cows, so have to breed a few that way for replacement heifers. So we run about 100 cows with Red Angus and (solid red) Shorthorn bulls, for the first cycle. The Shorthorn, is where the spots come from, like that calf in the second photo. Any roans trace back to cows we've bought.
We run all the rest of the cows with Charolais bulls, and swap the Red bulls with Char for the second cycle.
The replacements are bred Red Angus too.
So we end up with about 70 Red/black steers, maybe 10 red/black heifers that don't make the cut. And the rest are about 75% tan and 25% grey.
That's what we have presort sales for... All the red and black calves are graded.
Up here, the buyers can't wait for the Char cross calves, and we see a good premium for them. Most of our tan and silver
steer calves will be sorted into two one (sometimes two) owner pens. With the few really big, or small ones bring graded off. Same with the tan heifers.