FYI -Calves sold at OKC West.

[bird dog]

I shipped 17 to OKC West on Labor Day and they sold Wednesday. Calves weighed the evening before shipping on my scales weighed 12435 lbs. I got paid for 12070 lbs so around 3% shrink which I consider pretty good seeing that they shipped 310 miles and stayed a couple days on a yard with mid 90's temps. They were penned together with fresh water and feed.
They were preconditioned 65 days on pasture and about 7 lbs of creep per head, 4 days a week. 9 blacks, 3 whites, one yellow, one black motley. They were good calves but nothing exceptional. All commercial out of my Angus bulls. A little bit of ear on some. They had two rounds of shots and were implanted but they don't mention it much up there unless you have a large amount of calves in one draft. Heifers were guaranteed open.
They split the group into 4 drafts.
5 heifers at 633lbs $1.27
4 heifers at 744 $1.27
5 steers at 689 $1.41
3 steers at 828 $1.34

Commission, feed, and beef pro was $422.09 or $24.83 per head. Net before freight was $915 per head.

 

[shaz]

Sold a 680 lb steer with some culls cows 2 weeks ago. He brought 1.20.
Looks like you did pretty well.

 

[Dave]

On Thursday I went to La Grande and watched a couple hours of the sale. They were selling big drafts while I was there. I would say that you were in the same ball park on the prices.

 

[bird dog]

Yeah it was interesting Dave how close all the prices were with only the pot loads selling for a few cents more. I watched on the internet and had a real good idea what mine would sell for before they came through the ring. The runs are not currently large enough for the buyers to be to picky but I know that will change as we drift into fall. Most of the calves sold on Wednesdays at OKC are 650 lbs and up and are long weaned and well taken care of. The lighter weights sell on Tuesdays.
My calves sold right on the averages which is about all I can expect with my small loads, no reputation and mix of size and color. One thing about the bigger sales is they don't discount for color. They really like those beefy Charolais crosses but I saw some real nice shorthorn cross steers that were all painted up sell for a nickle over the average.

 

[Brute 23]

What do you think you had in them per head to precondition?

 

[bird dog]

I can give you a rough guess is all. Not including labor or expense to put out feed,the costs per head were.
Feed $46 Six to seven lbs a day for 4 days a week. 14% bagged creep pellets. I fed 96 bags.
Hay $5 Put out two rolls which they nibbled around on.
Implant $2 I had Ralgro so that's what I used.
Shots and wormer $8. IBR, Blackleg, Injection wormer Fly spray
Pasture and yardage $65. $1.00 per head per day.
So roughly $126. Probably other costs should be included.

Weight at weaning was 10064 lbs. Weight at shipping was 12435 or 139 lbs average gain per head. Little bit over 2 lbs a day. The pasture is poor this time of year and the rain stopped mid July so not much there.

Your real gain with preconditioning is really the weight they keep after leaving the farm. They would have shrunk 5 to 8% if sold at the local barns even being weaned. Much more in this heat if they were bawlers.

A set of scales will give you a lot of valuable information.