It was a gorgeous early spring day, with mild temperatures, lots of sunshine, and an absolute capacity crowd on hand to watch 119 lots of pure beef bulls roll through the Innisfail Auction Mart for Transcon’s Red Deer County Bull Sale. The multi-breed concept expanded again this year, so there was a broad selection of bulls on offer, representing Simmental, Angus, Hereford and Charolais genetics with an impressive amount of diversity within each breed – horned or polled; red, black or fullblood – there were simply lots of options to choose from!
The lead bulls rotated back to Simmental this year, and the sale started off with some palpable excitement as the first BEE Alpha sons were set to lead off the Red Deer 2024. We were at Beechinor’s the day that Ben & Kassandra Farrant selected BEE Alpha 915J, and if we recall correctly they paid $120,000 for the privilege. You wouldn’t think it possible to ever fly under the radar with a $120,000 bull purchase, but with the record setting ‘Rumble’ also selling that day, the ‘Alpha’ acquisition was maybe a little overlooked. The whole pen of Alpha sons were incredibly impressive; with none more so than Lot 10, Red Top Mr 108L. After some very spirited bidding, the gavel slammed home at $80,000, with Labatte Simmentals and Circle 7, from Shaunavon, SK emerging as the successful bidders! An amazing way to kick off the day, and rather cool to have the lead bull selected to work the legendary pastures at Labatte’s! We have gotten to know Ben & Kassandra over the years as we have been part of the same bull and heifers sales, and it is absolutely incredible to see their passion for elite purebred cattle shine though and be rewarded in the sales ring. It can be tremendously stressful to step out and invest heavily in purebred genetics, and it takes years to develop a program and weave different genetic lines together, so it was so awesome to see their success!
It was also a record day for Applecross Cattle. In the lead up to the sale, we received a lot of interest in this years’ bull string, specifically in our two homozygous polled bulls. We were really happy in the condition all our sale bulls were in and thought they were a pretty neat group that each had their own merits (and personalities!). The challenge with auctions is that you always need at least two bidders to be interested in the same bull for the price to move higher, and we certainly did more than alright in that regard in 2024! APLX Conway 23L, our lot 103 bull, was selected by Forden Fairview Farm / Lyle & Leanne Forden of Punnichy SK for $30,000, and has already made the trip to Saskatchewan, where he got off the truck and went straight to work! Meanwhile, lot 98, APLX Bastion 17L was selected for $23,000 by Jensen Simmentals in Osawatomie, Kansas, and will be leaving this week for his new home in the sunny south. Steve Jensen also selected a bred heifer (Applecross Abigail) from us at Equation 2023, so we certainly appreciate all his interest and support over the past few months! Lot 104, APLX Convoy 12L, also gets a lengthy truck-ride as he’ll be headed for Big Hills Simmentals, Sandy Lake, MB, while lot 99 APLX Biggio 30L, gets to stay close to home after being acquired by Ryan Layden / Layden Land & Livestock Ltd, from Red Deer County. Ryan was a repeat buyer for us, after selecting ‘Dillon’ from us back in 2021. It is always special to see customers return for more bulls. We were incredibly happy with our sales results, and its rather cool that three of our bulls will be working for fellow purebred breeders!
Overall, the sale averaged a very impressive $9,710, with 55 Simmentals averaging $10,486. 8 Charolais averaged $9,938, with 8 Black Angus averaging $10,688, 17 Herefords averaging $6,882 and 6 Red Angus averaging 9,000. It was great to have success throughout the auction across so many of the consignors!
Once again we need to recognize the team at Transcon for doing a tremendous job working the phones and managing the sale. The Red Deer County Bull Sale is part of an extremely busy stretch of events, and we appreciate the time and energy Jay Good, Glen Norton, Darren Paget, and Cody Coupland invest to ensure we have a successful sale. We are confident in referring inquiries we receive to the Transcon Team, for an unbiased and independent opinion of our cattle. They were constantly on the phone and in our pens, taking pictures of feet, watching the bulls walk out and passing their findings back to prospective buyers. With our three lead bulls all being selected by ‘Transcon on Order’ they were certainly busy! Every year has different bulls and different buyers (looking for different things), and their efforts may not always be as tangible as they were this year, but we always appreciate all of their hard work! We look forward to working with them again later in the year at Fleckvieh Equation!
A few additional thoughts on Red Deer 2024:
- A common theme on our two high sellers were certainly the homo-polled heads, but I also think that the non-dilutor status also made a difference in their sale price. We have tested for the dilutor gene for a number of years now, and it is another trait on our list that we check for. We have walked several dilutor carrier bulls over the years, so it isn’t a ‘deal breaker’, but we wouldn’t be doing our job of we weren’t noticing traits our customers also select for.
- We had another tough year on the semen testing front, with 5 of our 10 bulls making it to sale day. While the reasons did vary a bit, we have certainly done a lot of reflecting on our program and how we can improve things going forward. (It is said that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different results). We are looking to our wintering area as a spot that may need an upgrade.
- One of the downsides of wintering our sale bulls in a 5 acre paddock is that they don’t always have protection from the elements when it is -50 or when there is a -20 degree windchill…so maybe we can create a balance – where they have access to a larger space (to exercise and travel to keep their feet under them), but then also have the ability to confine them to a smaller, protected area once ‘hard winter’ hits. Things to think about; changes to make; as it simply doesn’t make economic sense to raise bulls that just end up in the meat ring. We can never be perfect, (and certainly we can’t expect every bull to always pass their semen test), but we can certainly learn and get better!
- One of the largest changes for Red Deer 2024 was the size of the sale. With the addition of several new consignors and different breeds, there were a total of 130 bulls catalogued, which was almost double the 68 bulls that sold in this sale only two years ago in 2022. There are a number of good things – the capacity crowd on hand meant Innisfail Auction Mart had as many people in attendance as I had ever seen, and more bulls translates into lower costs for consignors. But there are also some downsides – with some awesome BBQ on site, despite cutting steaks in half, we still ran out of food (and water) for all our guests. And, with such a large crowd, we know some people that left early (hopefully to go home to watch/bid online!).
- I also wonder if the Fullblood Simmentals ‘got lost’ a bit within the sale. With so many breeds on offer, and a lengthy sale, there wasn’t a separate ‘fullblood’ carve out – with 3-5 selling in one spot, 5 in another, and then a couple here and there throughout the day. Part of that is on us – if our entire bull string had passed semen testing, the fullblood numbers would have been a fair bit higher, but I do think that bidders and buyers interested in Fullblood bulls, had to be very diligent throughout the afternoon, not to ‘miss’ bulls. We have attended several large dispersals over the years, and found that often the best opportunities for upside were found later in the day, so there are always pro’s and con’s to larger events – perspective that also depends on whether a person is buying or selling!
- In regards to our own breeding program in 2024, we will be staying fairly ‘status quo’ after splurging last year on two new herd sires. Both BLL Tombstone 223K and Virginia Journey 509K now have their first calf crops on the ground, and we are pretty pumped about each bull’s potential based on the early returns from their respective calf crops. Black Gold Battleborn 44H is now the ‘proven seasoned veteran’ of the group and, while he has outgrown the heifer pen, he has proven himself to be very versatile, allowing us to have three fairly even breeding groups.
Over the past fourteen years, it has been great to be part of the Red Deer Bull Sale and 2024 was certainly no exception. Public auction is a great forum to get feedback on the program we are building at Applecross Cattle, and we were both humbled and honored with the number of compliments our pen of bulls received throughout the week-end, from both peers in the purebred industry and commercial cattlemen alike. We strive to produce top quality cattle, and can at times be our own worst critics, so it is wonderful to hear all the kind words. Not a year goes by that we don’t learn how to do things a little better for next year, and it is equally important to continue to receive tips and advice on how to make improvements to our program. With the bull sale now in the rear-view mirror, and breeding season underway, we look forward to the challenge of developing more and different genetics for future years.
Until next time,
Dennis