Snow doesn’t dampen cattle sale

The biggest spring sale ever held in Stratton looked more like a winter sale on Saturday.
With a winter storm blasting hard outside, 1,424 head of snowy-backed cattle were put over the scales and under the auctioneer’s hammer between 9:30 a.m. and 9 p.m.
But only a couple of trucks got loaded that night. With almost 30 cm of snow on the ground and most highways closed, they wouldn’t have been able to go anywhere even if they had been able to get turned around in the parking lot.
The majority of the cattle were loaded out Monday.
Still, some of the workers stayed all night.
“Everything was all set up for feeding, but then we had to deal with the storm,” sales barn manager Clayton Teeple said when contacted there early Tuesday morning.
“That made extra work, and then the water froze up so we had to fix up another system for watering,” he added.
Teeple had sent out a truckload of cattle late Monday night and was expecting the last truck to show up soon.
During the sale, the new upgrades at the sales barn (being supported, in large party, by volunteer labour from the local agricultural community) lived up to expectations.
One district farmer said the improved handling facilities put Stratton ahead of all the other sales barns in terms of technology.
“The crowding tub and the new alleyway leading up to the barn worked really well,” said Teeple. “But because of the weather and comfort level, we only used the RFID reader for inventorying the animals coming into the sales barns before the sale.”
At the next sale this fall, the RFID reader will be used after the cattle have passed through the sales ring.
The shortage of help due to weather was not noticeable, with the sale running smoothly from start to finish.
“The guys all worked really hard,” Teeple stressed.
One farmer observed that when you see all the young guys working at the sale, it looks good for the future of farming in the district.
“If they can afford to buy land,” suggested another. “With today’s outlook in the beef industry, it would be difficult for anyone to buy land unless they have backing from either their family or community through co-operative financing.”
Even though the market for cattle at the moment isn’t great, prices at Stratton were comparable to those being paid to the east and west.
Teeple was grateful to the buyers who all were able to get to Stratton despite the bad weather, as well as to the sales workers and volunteers for all their hard work.
But he’s especially grateful to the district farmers, both as consignors and as buyers, who continue to show confidence in the Stratton sales barn.