In 2013 I purchased a pen of 705 lb. Hereford heifers from the Hereford influence sale at Bluegrass South and took them home. This turned out to be the best deal I ever turned in the cattle business. Turned them out for the summer with a Red Poll bull I had at the time, a proven easy calver.
They all quickly settled and prices for cattle started to rise. My daughter took pictures and we posted them on a cattle for sale page on the internet. They were pretty and we sold them to a man over 900 miles away for a price I am hesitant to reveal. I really had little in them but summer grass and one trip through the chute to vaccinate and preg check.
Herefords do offer a lot, but as had been said, the dock on straight Herefords is just too much to overcome. To me, a vigorous looking Hereford or a thick red roan Shorthorn are the most attractive beef animal going, but both are a real drag on the market.
I've purchased heifers there that year and a few before and after too. Most of what I bought I'd sell them as bred heifers the next year. I've kept several for cows that didn't make it into the bred heifer sale for one reason or another.
They've typically made good cows.
Sone of my favorites have been some Brahman influenced calves that were put in groups of what they call RedX. I usually bought BlackX and RedX which really is BWF and RWF with sometimes a solid or cross of something else that apparently the graders don't know what to do with. Wound up with a steer once in a group of graded heifers.
Calves are supposed to be weaned atleast 45 days but once got a group that a few in it were not weaned.
I stopped selling in the sale when we got a call that one of our heifers was bred and we had to pay $200 to the buyer.
To this day I don't believe it, there was a mistake somewhere, because our vet had checked our heifers and she was open. I separated her away from the bull after that and watched her cycle several several times before the sale. One time before I moved the bull to another farm I got him in the barn because he was standing by the fence when she was in heat and I didn't want him to go through it.
There is a demand for Hereford females, you can sometimes do pretty well advertising them online like that, it just depends on if the right person is looking at the time.
We sold a couple Hereford Heifers at the bred heifer sale one year. We were talking with the sale manager who is an Angus breeder, about that we were going to bring any back home that didn't bring a certain amount. He naturally assumed we were talking about the red ones. He said yeah those things may not bring anything. They weren't the ones we were concerned about, they topped the whole sale and we brought back a couple black heifers.