Hello All:

Please bear with me: You should only have to endure one or two more updates before the sale on March 9! If you have any questions about any part of the process please, let us know.  www.icecattle.com

Sight Unseen Bidding: Ashley will again be in charge of SUS bids. Please contact her at [email protected] or 402-257-7587 if you would like to have her bid via proxy on your behalf. She treats these bids with the highest integrity and will not bid any more than necessary, up to your limit, to procure an animal. Ashley knows these cattle individually far better than I do. She would need to be the one you visited with regarding specific animals.

Rideshares: We are more than willing to help customers line up loads but have found this to be a challenge until after the sale is over, and after the sale is quite chaotic with clerking and load outs. If you are most certainly planning to attend the sale with a trailer AND you are willing to haul other people’s cattle AND you know approximately how much room you will have, please send us your destination location and about how many you are willing to haul, and we will get a list made up and in an UPDATE.

Health Papers: If you are from out of state, your purchases on sale day will not be ready to go with health papers. The first couple of sales we had every animal ready to ship anywhere, at great expense to us and which ended up being unnecessary. Most ended up either not needing papers because they stayed in Nebraska, or we had time to get papers the next week because the animals were purchased online. Our protocol since then has been to have our vet at our place the Monday after the sale (March 11) to do all the health testing, and he generally has papers ready to go by the Friday after the sale (March 15). We happily board every animal for a week to get these issues taken care of but ask that you get them picked up the next weekend. We contact every customer who needs papers once we know when they will be ready.

Encouraging Story (for me anyway): A few weeks ago we listed cows for sale in an UPDATE from one of our best, loyal and long-time customers, Matt Shurts. Matt has been buying ICE bulls and bred heifers for over 10 years and his herd is 100% ICE. Matt bought ICE bulls when we were still with PCC. He recently brought me a load of calves that we purchased from him for our grass and/or grain fed beef program. While here, he explained that the day the cow listing was released he had 12 calls by the end of the day and 11 calls the next day. He easily sold the cows. While that part of the story alone was encouraging, the most encouraging part was that none of the callers were ICE customers. Two of the callers had never interacted with our kind of genetics from any seedstock producer and were simply looking to find grazing genetics. Most of the others had worked with another grazing genetics producer.  I HOPE this means the word is getting out! I have asked Matt, and he has graciously agreed to tell you his story and give his perspective on ICE cattle. Matt is willing to do this as a favor for us; he’s not being paid. To learn more about ICE from a third-party, please call 785-738-0000. (I’ve never seen a phone number end like that.)

Success: We all have our perceptions of what success looks like. We are prone to base success on what someone else has (envy). We could be better off than 90% of the population of the world (materially we are) and still be frustrated, depressed, etc. because our neighbor is doing “better.” We see a nice house, shiny machinery and a new pickup and envy someone who, in reality, is in debt up to their eyeballs with cortisol levels through the roof from anxiety. Try this: Run your operation, and your life, with character and integrity and let God determine what your success looks like. Work unto the Lord and He will bless the work of your hands as He sees fit. I don’t “preach” because I’m perfect, I preach (write) as a hypocrite who has screwed up far more times than you have…and who still does.

Antagonism: Synergism exists when two forces enhance/uplift/benefit one another. The sum is greater than the parts. Antagonism exists when two forces compete for the same space, the more of one means less of the other, liberal and intelligence for example. In the seedstock business culling decisions should be EASY. You shouldn’t sell bulls, no matter the price, if the bull should be a steer. However, market conditions are often antagonistic to proper culling. This may be sour grapes but as I look up, way up, at the sale price averages of other producers I can’t help but wonder what was done to keep their animals in the program. In the bull business you can “buy” (produce) good looking bulls with enough feed. I don’t believe the majority of bull buyers understand how much bull development matters. Feed corn/silage is antagonistic to a long-lived, cow covering maniac, bull. If a bull is advertised as only able to breed 30 or fewer head then maybe that bull should be a steer. Sex is not work for a bull; they will only breed that few if they are so overfat they fall apart during the breeding season. Quit buying bulls that fall apart!

Cowboy Auction: If you’ve been to one of our sales or to a Pharo Cattle Company sale (I don’t know if anyone else uses this format), you have experienced how a cowboy auction works. We don’t do it the YELLY!!!! way. Prior to the sale everyone at the sale is issued a bright colored bidder card with their buyer number. Online bidders have their own number through DVAuction. When a lot comes up on the screen, we ask all interested buyers to raise their card in the air. The auctioneer will increase the bid until there is only one card left. If the last two buyers drop out at the same time, we back up to where both buyers dropped out, offer the animal at a smaller increment, then see if either party is interested. If neither buyer wants to go up another increment, the buyer with the smallest bidder number wins. There are no ties between DVAuction bidders or between an online bidder and an in-person bidder. With DVAuction the online bidder will either bow out or have the bid and the in-person bidder will put their card down. The most uncomfortable part of selling any lot is the few seconds “pause” to confirm the online bidding is completed…which is more comfortable to me than having ringmen shouting at me. If you think a bid is incorrect or if you think we jumped a bid, PLEASE alert us to it immediately. We aim to conduct our auctions with the highest integrity and mistakes get made. We don’t want any concern that someone paid more for an animal than they ought.

Female Due Dates: We have our annual A.I. project the first week of August and then turn clean up bulls out through September. Our females should calve in very late April through the end of June.

Base Prices: We raised the base prices on all our animals this year. We think this is more than appropriate given the market conditions in the cattle industry. In addition, we believe our cattle are selling at prices that carry “extreme duty” value. Our cattle are better now than when we were with Pharo Cattle Company, but they don’t sell for near the amount. Don’t blame our cattle; it’s my poor marketing. To improve our marketing I need to be speaking at grazing and soil health events to tell our story. Interestingly enough, I have been asked to do just that at an upcoming event for Green Cover Seed in Bladen, NE. I’m actually planning on having Ashley do it; she does the “people” thing better than I do!

Lunch: As is our tradition, a free hamburger lunch with sides and drinks will be available to all who attend the sale.