"I guess my thoughts on this are different. How about finding guys that operate in a similar fashion and marketing calves as a group, how about telling your auction market to get their A$% in gear and announce the calves, how about selling direct, how about custom feeding rather than keeping calves at home, how about 100 different options to get more money for the cattle?"
All your proposals are reasonable, however they all have some holes in them that make them less than desirable.
Group selling is a pretty good option in my mind. I tried that this year, however I couldn't gather up 100 steers of like weight and conformation. My area has about 30,000 head in it, however almost everyone uses exotic stock to some degree. That leaves us British guys looking elsewhere.
And I spoke to my auction barn. They are perfectly willing to sell batches of age verified animals, as long as they don't have to sort them. Since the oilpatch has stolen a whack of workers, the auction barns have a VERY tough time getting enough help to sort based on conformation and weight, much less adding another variable into the mix. All this for what amounts to less than 20% of the calves crossing their scales.
Selling direct is also ok I spose, but if you have top end cattle, you lose money. Each year I have feedlots come out and look over my calves to get a bid. Each year at the barn, I end up 5 - 8 cents above the high bid. So I'd gain 3 or 4 cents for age verification, but lose 5 - 8 cents.
Like I said, the economics aren't there to make it work. And as long as that remains true, the vast majority of Canadian cattle will remain unverified and the packers that need those verified cattle won't be able to get them.
And custom feeding. Well we won't go there. Thats a hell of a high risk venture. High cost (compared to doing it yourself) with no guarantee of return. Hell, the last 3 years there haven't been returns on feeding yourself, much less having someone else do it.
Anyway, we could go back and forth like this for months, and I doubt either of us would be able to convince the other.
Kato,
You make a valid point, and its a sore spot with me. The CCIA needs some help, and in a big way. They have a $12,000,000/yr budget, yet only register 3,000,000 animals. Thats $4/animal cost to the taxpayer and the cattle producer. Private firms doing animal registrations are charging 50 cents per animal, and making money hand over fist. The systems development budget for the CCIA is right out of hand given the trivial nature of the database and technology in use. As a business analyst, I know what it costs to build database applications. The CCIA database is TRIVIAL. If someone on one of my teams couldn't build the database and the front end in a week, they'd be looking for new jobs.
Rod
All your proposals are reasonable, however they all have some holes in them that make them less than desirable.
Group selling is a pretty good option in my mind. I tried that this year, however I couldn't gather up 100 steers of like weight and conformation. My area has about 30,000 head in it, however almost everyone uses exotic stock to some degree. That leaves us British guys looking elsewhere.
And I spoke to my auction barn. They are perfectly willing to sell batches of age verified animals, as long as they don't have to sort them. Since the oilpatch has stolen a whack of workers, the auction barns have a VERY tough time getting enough help to sort based on conformation and weight, much less adding another variable into the mix. All this for what amounts to less than 20% of the calves crossing their scales.
Selling direct is also ok I spose, but if you have top end cattle, you lose money. Each year I have feedlots come out and look over my calves to get a bid. Each year at the barn, I end up 5 - 8 cents above the high bid. So I'd gain 3 or 4 cents for age verification, but lose 5 - 8 cents.
Like I said, the economics aren't there to make it work. And as long as that remains true, the vast majority of Canadian cattle will remain unverified and the packers that need those verified cattle won't be able to get them.
And custom feeding. Well we won't go there. Thats a hell of a high risk venture. High cost (compared to doing it yourself) with no guarantee of return. Hell, the last 3 years there haven't been returns on feeding yourself, much less having someone else do it.
Anyway, we could go back and forth like this for months, and I doubt either of us would be able to convince the other.
Kato,
You make a valid point, and its a sore spot with me. The CCIA needs some help, and in a big way. They have a $12,000,000/yr budget, yet only register 3,000,000 animals. Thats $4/animal cost to the taxpayer and the cattle producer. Private firms doing animal registrations are charging 50 cents per animal, and making money hand over fist. The systems development budget for the CCIA is right out of hand given the trivial nature of the database and technology in use. As a business analyst, I know what it costs to build database applications. The CCIA database is TRIVIAL. If someone on one of my teams couldn't build the database and the front end in a week, they'd be looking for new jobs.
Rod
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