A
Anonymous
There are 3 or 4 weekday sale barns within pretty easy driving distance from my place, each having a sale on a different day of the week. I hear a lot of purely anecdotal evidence that the price for calves varies quite a bit depending on which sale barn you use. And a couple of "old-timers" have told me that they always sell at one barn but buy at a different barn, due to real or imagined price differences.
I've wanted to run a little experiment for a long time, but have never been able to actually do it, and wonder if any of you have ever tried doing something like the following:
Round up say 9 steers (or heifers) that you feel are of essentially equal quality, same color, approx. the same weight, etc. and take 3 each to various salebarns, on succeeding days so that you are sure of selling very comparable animals and all within a 2 or 3 day time period. I wonder if doing this several times would reveal whether there is in fact a meaningful difference in prices paid to the seller depending on which barn is used. I realize that they all publish after the fact price ranges for various classes of calves sold, but I think such data is much too broad and imprecise to use for purposes of making this "test".
Has anybody tried doing something similar to what I outlined above?
Any order buyers out there that care to give their thoughts?
I've wanted to run a little experiment for a long time, but have never been able to actually do it, and wonder if any of you have ever tried doing something like the following:
Round up say 9 steers (or heifers) that you feel are of essentially equal quality, same color, approx. the same weight, etc. and take 3 each to various salebarns, on succeeding days so that you are sure of selling very comparable animals and all within a 2 or 3 day time period. I wonder if doing this several times would reveal whether there is in fact a meaningful difference in prices paid to the seller depending on which barn is used. I realize that they all publish after the fact price ranges for various classes of calves sold, but I think such data is much too broad and imprecise to use for purposes of making this "test".
Has anybody tried doing something similar to what I outlined above?
Any order buyers out there that care to give their thoughts?