Dexter Cattle For Sale Discussion Board

The Carlisle sale is set to go, with 4 bulls, 22 cows many with calves at foot, and 17 heifers entered, plus a number of "commercial" entiries such as cross breds or steers.

Herds represented include Planetree, Breoch, Boo, Elmwood, Harron, Muriau, Topster, Higher Culm, Riggcroft, Swinburne, Whalton Manor, Barnaby, Knivers Meadow, Gorran, Sandholm, Burnside, Mellings and Liddlebank. The full catalogue should be available online soon at Harrison & Hetherington's website.

As usual there will be a gathering in the "Auctioneer" just next to the market on the Friday night, 20th September - if you are able to go, be you vendor, buyer or just looking please contact Kay Darnbrook to book a meal.

I would of course particularly commend the Burnside entries, 5 heifers entered but probably only 4 will be present, all sired by Owram Electric Eric, a son of Apple Joe, and have all run with Harron Loyal Commando since late June. The four are offspring of Burnside Candytuft and two of her daughters, so provide a very good base for starting a true breeding herd. All non-short.

Duncan

hello everyone is there any pictures of any entries please for all to see thanx jean

I have had great trouble trying to post pictures on here in the past, using photobucket it all seems to go wrong, but below is a link to my Burnside Dexter Cattle facebook page, I have just posted a pic of one of my heifers which will be at Carlisle on 20/21st September. By far the best way to view of course is in the flesh, do come along and view them all there. The Friday night and Saturday are a great get together of northern Dexter people, some sellers, some buyers, and a great number just interested and of course meeting each other.


https://www.facebook.com/#!/photo.php?f ... =1&theater

Duncan
(not too confident the link will work)

if you right click the link and open in new page it works, doesn't seem to work if you just double click it.

Full catalogue now available on line at
http://harrisonandhetherington.co.uk/si ... 202013.pdf with the poultry one on harrisonandhetherington.co.uk as well.

Duncan

the sale on saturday gets a mention again on stackyard website.

http://www.stackyard.com/news/2013/09/b ... exter.html

Sending all vendors Good wishes for the sale tomorrow. I think the prices will be very good, with plenty of Irish buyers (following on from the James Martin programme tonight endorsing Dexter Beef)
and by the looks of some Internet photos some top quality Stock forward. Very much wish I was there!
Good Auction prices=Good private Dexter Sales. Good Luck to all!

Best Wishes Lisa Bell.

Well it is over for another year, and I think I have probably had a better day than many sellers at this years sale, which seemed to have many disappointing prices. We should get a full report in due course. Many thanks are due to those making such an event possible, the Borders Group for organising, Mary Kay and Sue Rheam for inspecting, the McIntoshes and others for stewarding, the auctioneer for working so hard for bids, and a personal thanks from me to the very willing volunteers who helped me from the preparation for the ring, leading in the ring for show and helping get them to the sale ring etc. All the help was most welcome as I have to admit after a few years of inspecting but not selling I was a tiny bit apprehensive!


I suspect we need to do some homework on the reasons for the difference of opinion on the value of breeding stock in the eyes of the seller and buyer, especially at a time when Dexter beef can be sold at a considerable premium over supermarket mince and the price of ordinary beef on a deadweight basis has never been higher on the open market.


Duncan

Pleased to hear they all found new homes Duncan.

As regards prices I think there are a number of factors at work here. Firstly you have to look at why vendors are vendors - if the returns on Dexters are so good then why aren't breeders retaining their stock to increase their own herds and/or selling the finished steers/heifers? Whatever answers you come up with probably apply equally to the potential buyers.

The wider market has seen good prices for prime cattle and culls, caused by a constricted supply, particularly on the back of forage shortages/quality issues last year. No matter how good or bad the prices are, it's the margins that are the important thing that determines stocking rates, and they haven't been too good across the board despite improved prices.

I've also experienced, over the last couple of years from more than one vendor (after responding to private ads), some hostility if they think you might be aiming to make a profit with their animals. Vendors should be confident and proud that a purchasor can see a profit in their animals, else what are they breeding them for? We can't rely upon a constant fresh supply of new breeders with deep pockets to maintain the breed.

Finally auctions are what they are; a perfect barometer of demand and prices, but without underbidders, or decent reserves, the prices will remain low. If vendors aren't prepared to take their own stock home with them, they shouldn't expect others to be.

Rob R wrote:
As regards prices I think there are a number of factors at work here. Firstly you have to look at why vendors are vendors - if the returns on Dexters are so good then why aren't breeders retaining their stock to increase their own herds and/or selling the finished steers/heifers? Whatever answers you come up with probably apply equally to the potential buyers.

Why aren't breeders retaining their stock to increase their own herds?
· They don’t have enough room they would be overrun
· They don’t have time or physical capability to look after more
· Depending on circumstances, it costs more to keep them than they are getting in return
· Lack of confidence in the market
· It is what they want to do i.e. produce pedigree breeding animals for sale for breeding purposes (their cash crop)
· Personal circumstances

and/or selling the finished steers/heifers?
· Moral dilemma
· They don’t have the room to finish them
· Costs more to finish than they are getting in return
· They don’t have the time/money/physical capability to finish them all
· Their market is pedigree breeding stock not meat animals - (let us put to one side the fact that one should cull esp. in the early years to secure quality)

Whatever answers you come up with probably apply equally to the potential buyers.

Is the sale in the main attracting existing breeders who don’t really need any more stock who went there only to find that prices were ‘on the floor’ (“I couldn’t resist it because I couldn’t produce it for that price”)?

Rob R wrote: The wider market has seen good prices for prime cattle and culls, caused by a constricted supply, particularly on the back of forage shortages/quality issues last year. No matter how good or bad the prices are, it's the margins that are the important thing that determines stocking rates, and they haven't been too good across the board despite improved prices.

The margins are so tight if you have to pay the current market price per kg (i.e. as per commercial animals) for a Dexter steer/beef heifer it is more trouble than it is worth (for me at least). There is a limit to what the market will stand – some areas more lucrative than others. Nobody works harder than you Rob, at marketing your beef - do you actually factor in the cost of your time spent in chat rooms etc. or running about sourcing stock?

Rob R wrote: I've also experienced, over the last couple of years from more than one vendor (after responding to private ads), some hostility if they think you might be aiming to make a profit with their animals.

Perfectly understandable if they have perhaps made a loss (for whatever reason) or do not want to see their animal end up on someone’s plate.

Rob R wrote: We can't rely upon a constant fresh supply of new breeders with deep pockets to maintain the breed.

Very true.

Rob R wrote: Finally auctions are what they are; a perfect barometer of demand and prices

Not necessarily, there are established breeders who do not use the auction system and have a waiting list for their animals.

Jac wrote:

Rob R wrote:
As regards prices I think there are a number of factors at work here. Firstly you have to look at why vendors are vendors - if the returns on Dexters are so good then why aren't breeders retaining their stock to increase their own herds and/or selling the finished steers/heifers? Whatever answers you come up with probably apply equally to the potential buyers.

Why aren't breeders retaining their stock to increase their own herds?
· They don’t have enough room they would be overrun
· They don’t have time or physical capability to look after more
· Depending on circumstances, it costs more to keep them than they are getting in return
· Lack of confidence in the market
· It is what they want to do i.e. produce pedigree breeding animals for sale for breeding purposes (their cash crop)
· Personal circumstances

and/or selling the finished steers/heifers?
· Moral dilemma
· They don’t have the room to finish them
· Costs more to finish than they are getting in return
· They don’t have the time/money/physical capability to finish them all
· Their market is pedigree breeding stock not meat animals - (let us put to one side the fact that one should cull esp. in the early years to secure quality)

Thanks Jac, that pretty much sums up my thoughts too, all good reasons why people might not want to buy/not pay very much for them.

Private vendors set a price and the buyers either take it or leave it and you only need one buyer in that scenario to make it work. The auction system relies upon having at least two bidders to push the price up above the starting bid. Quite often in the auction prices are encouraged upwards where there are confident bidding going on in the public arena. This stands to reason as, if there is no interest then should you really be competing for that animal? On the other hand if there are two or more confident bidders then it creates a sense of value of that animal and prices are good.

I factor in all my time, as I'm self employed I don't have an hourly rate but time (and money) spent travelling or promoting has to be paid for out of my earnings, and more importantly cashflow has to be considered. I've always found it annoying that the specialist rare breed sales are twice a year, at the same times of the year, whereas the commercial store sales are every week. If you don't have cash in the bank during the mad eight weeks of autumn sales then you can't purchase stock by auction. Spending a lot of time on marketing stock through forums is, IMO, not time well spent, most of my sales come through my website although initial enquiries do come through twitter and facebook. Running an online business it is important that you don't answer enquiries once every few weeks, just as it would be if you had a shop and were hardly ever open.

I have to disagree entirely that it is acceptable to be hostile to buyers though. At that point you have decided to sell your animals you are relinquishing control over those animals in exchange for money and have no right to dictate what happens to them from that point forward. If you want to retain that control, you must retain the animal. There is no point selling an animal at a price at which incorporates the full profit either as that leaves the purchasor with only two options of either making a loss or, at best, getting their money back, which isn't a good reputation for a breed to have as it doesn't encourage repeat business. If the vendor is making a loss, and doesn't want to, then they should either increase the asking price or refuse the offer - it's as simple as that, and there's no need to be anything less than perfectly civil with potential customers who enquire. You should be firm but fair in turning down business (this isn't a problem specific to Dexters, I must add).

Jac wrote:

Rob R wrote: Finally auctions are what they are; a perfect barometer of demand and prices

Not necessarily, there are established breeders who do not use the auction system and have a waiting list for their animals.

Sorry, I missed out the word 'supply' from 'supply, demand and prices'. Private sales do take away supply, but they also take away demand. If private vendors were made to only sell by auction it would improve attendance and improve prices, but we can't enforce that, so it's up to the ones that do attend to make the prices. At the last sale I went to I bought two animals and spent just under £700 on Dexters, but I probably added a good few thousand to the prices overall because I bid on more than I bought. It doesn't matter, at auction, how good you think a cow is, if you (and at least one other person) don't bid for it then the price will remain low.

Does anyone have any actual prices from the sale please, in particular what did Planetree Themis (photo on for sale section of this site) make? She looks stunning in the photo.

Yes has any one got prices and does anyone know if the bulls sold and for how much

Rob R wrote:
I have to disagree entirely that it is acceptable to be hostile to buyers though.

I didn’t say it was acceptable just understandable. I sometimes get ‘bargain hunters’ enquiring about my stock but these are quickly filtered out at the telephone stage – firm and fair.

Apologies, I thought you meant 'understandable' as in reasonable or forgivable.