Few locals purchase cattle

A cattle sale at the Stratton sales barn Saturday saw few locals purchasing animals.
“We had pretty well all the same out-of-town buyers as previous, but there were very few local people buying at this particular sale,” noted Ken McKinnon, president of the Rainy River Cattlemen’s Association.
“That’s probably because of the feed situation,” he explained. “There’s just not a lot of feed around this year, so there’s not a lot of local guys needing extra animals.”
McKinnon noted there were 549 head of cattle at the sales yard, with a gross sales receipt of $252,000.
“It put a few bucks back in the producers’ pockets,” he remarked.
And although conceding that overall prices were down, McKinnon said the good quality cattle went for fair prices.
“The cull cattle was down considerably, but that’s to be expected depending on the time of year,” he explained. “A lot of those cattle are going to market, which is depressing the price.”
McKinnon also stressed these numbers can’t be compared to last year’s because the RRCA normally doesn’t have a sale this late in the year.
“It was sort of a clean-up sale at the end of the year for cattle producers,” he indicated.
“They’re starting to cull and some of the later-weaned calves—you get quite a mixture of older cattle, the tail end of the yearlings, and some of the later-weaned calves.
“You get quite a variety of different age groups of livestock,” he stressed.