Sale Prep…is mostly over but there are still a few things left to do. Well, for me to do, everyone else has a lot to do! Ashley will be home the week before the sale (March 15 is sale day) to meet with customers who want to see the cattle before the sale. If you have questions about the cattle or any part of the buying process please call Ashley at 402-257-7587. In addition, Ashley will be getting all the animals tagged with a permanent ID tag and a lot tag that week. If you’d like to observe that process please call Ashley to set it up. It would be a good time to see every animal. The animals will sell in lot order. I believe we have at least one cull already, a Hereford cow, and we will update out-of-sale animals as we are made aware. We also need to get the building ready for sale day. Mr. David supervised James to start cleaning up and it looks pretty good right now.

ICE Guarantees: The word “guarantee”, for me anyway, has long meant something less than what seems to be implied. A guarantee can sound like, “THIS IS GOING TO WORK SPECTACULARLY NO MATTER WHAT!”. In reality, a guarantee is what someone standing behind their product will ACTUALLY do to make things right when the product doesn’t work…and there can be vastly varying opinions on what is “right”. An Amazon guarantee pretty much means if you don’t like the product return it for a refund. I actually don’t mind issuing that type of guarantee but distance and shipping and other preferences often make that too cumbersome. One of the WORST parts of this business for me is knowing that not all our cattle end up being spectacular. We do everything we know to do for them to have that potential, we aggressively pursue pressure to eliminate problem cattle, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t problems. Not all calving ease heifers calve unassisted, not all calving ease bulls throw calves that are birthed unassisted. Such is the nature of this business and I am extremely grateful for our customers who understand these things and who have been VERY gracious in working with us to make things right.

Here are our guarantees and what I’m willing to do to stand behind our cattle: Every bull is guaranteed to be a breeder for his first season, we don’t guarantee bulls beyond that. If a bull breeds the first season but not subsequently, because of an injury, disease, etc., then I believe ICE has done what we need to do. We offer (and highly recommend you take us up on the offer) to pay for a BSE (Breeding Soundness Exam) about 1 month before you are ready to turn a bull out. If a bull is “bad” we offer to refund the difference between what you paid for the bull and what you received for him at an auction barn. We ask for copies of the exam and the auction receipt. In the unfortunate event this happens we will NOT have a replacement bull available.

Bred Heifer Guarantee: We guarantee every heifer will calve unassisted. We know this doesn’t always happen. Overwhelmingly, our replacement females come from the heifers we buy in the sale. During calving season we check them first thing in the morning, midday, and last thing before sunset. We rarely have a nighttime issue, but we have. ICE is willing to pay for a vet call if you need assistance calving a heifer, on the ranch or in town. If you assist a heifer on your own we’re willing to pay $100 to you for doing so. We will take your word for it. We are willing to stand behind our bulls and heifers and, to this point, have always been able to work through problems in a reasonable fashion.

Experiment: Last week we had a forecast for a night with a 10 below temperature, wind and snow. Though I shouldn’t, I still get a little nervous with the bulls and heifers having to go through that weather under the conditions we have them in. They are already grazing low quality forage with no supplements…and are losing body condition. So, I decided to try an experiment: I had the young men put out a few bales of relatively high-quality sorghum-sudan hay (there’s that almost four letter word!). I thought they could benefit from a night behind a windbreak and a good meal. We put out 4 bales, approximately 6400 lbs., for 140 head, about 45 lbs./hd. This is the first hay they’ve had all fall/winter. Unsurprisingly, they ate it into the ground in about 16 hours. Uh oh, nervousness increases! Am I starving my cattle?!? It did get down to 10 below and the wind did blow but it only snowed about 3”. I decided to do another 4 bales the next day. Result, they ate about two of those bales then went out and grazed! I am stunned. I can’t remember a time we’ve ever fed hay in a short term situation in which we weren’t soon ready to move them to another location. I’ve put hay out for cows when we’ve had an ice storm cover the ground and they are forced to go back to stalk grazing once the ice is gone. It is so pleasing that the bulls and heifers left good hay in a pen to go graze cornstalks, soybean stubble and picked over cover crop residue. I’m consistently proud of our animals and perennially amazed at what they can do.

Recent Sale Barn Fact: I saw a clip of a 2300# cow that sold as an open weigh-up for over $3200. BOTH of those numbers are astounding. That’s a high price…BUT how does a cow weigh 2300#?!? When Kristin and I moved back to the farm from Lincoln in 1996 I was caring for an older couple’s small Hereford herd. They were VERY generous in compensating me for my work and one year they purchased for me the Grand Champion Hereford bred heifer at a show event. Knowing no better, I thought this to be once-in-a-lifetime stuff! The heifer proceeded to calve but next year she came up open. Well, you most certainly don’t sell the GRAND CHAMPION! So, we of course gave her a year off. Next year, open again. I sold that cow, who lived 4 years and had one calf, as a sale barn weigh-up weighing 1900 lbs. I couldn’t see over her back (but she was a GRAND CHAMPION). That heifer indeed was a Grand Champion, she was the champion of losing money. The 2300# cow lost money too, at least lost someone money. I urge you to be diligent in weighing where you’re going to get your seedstock. The producer may not be losing money selling a high-priced bull or female, but you will if the bull falls apart or the female can’t rebreed. Your seedstock producer MUST be pressuring their herd…high dollar sales give exactly the opposite motivation. Choose wisely.