Market giveth market taketh

[kato]

But..... A bit of perspective... I was cleaning up in the office today and took the 2003 book off the shelf. I saw we sold cull cows for $1200 on the 9th of May, and in the fall we sold a mature 2000 pound plus bull for $317. Now THAT'S a market drop.

How on earth did we get through that? Amazing.

[ag-boy]

some nice reading ! on cattle prices
as a old time cattleman , we all should have learned from b-s-e drop and now the big price drop, yes most of us have paid off debt.
remember this new ab government does not have the money to bale us out like before with oil at 37 dollar !
federal liberal party JT spending every day and dollar at 70 cent .
are we in trouble ???
our young people doin,t worry at all yet! OK we all have christmass coming !! so how bad is things gone go down in cattle price ?
watch January for bargains coming up !
but to all of you good readers on Agriville, all the very best and good health in to the new -year and a
MERRY CHRISTMASS

[grassfarmer]

Kato we get through it because it's the cyclical nature of agriculture. When I moved to Canada in 2000 we were in a "down cycle" in livestock in Scotland. Our stock was all sold along with our farm to the new owner - I remember well the valuation we got on a number of cull ewes we had on hand - "zero value".

Since then sheep and cattle over there have traded at higher levels than we ever thought possible. But they have down to low levels again too. What goes up must come down. It seems a constant in this business.

[kato]

The bse down cycle was twice the length and much deeper than any cycle ever before. I can't count how many times we "pulled a rabbit out of a hat" to get through each obstacle. Lol. It taught us a lot about thinking out of the box and being creative.

Lessons learned that won't be soon forgotten.