Livestock Auctioneering Contest

Have you ever been to a livestock auctioneering contest? Ever been to a livestock salebarn?Livestock markets are where cattle are sold in a live setting, with an auctioneer calling the price, and buyers bidding until the cattle are sold for the highest possible price (assuming the auctioneer doesn't miss a bid). Buyers can bid live in the salebarn, or from the phone or Internet in some instances. 
The contest I attended was an LMA (Livestock Marketing Association) World Livestock Auctioneer Championship Quarterfinal Contest.  
There were 20 men competing, and the top 8 moved on to the semi-final round of competition, which will be held this summer. This was one of four quarterfinal rounds held across the country, and the top 8 from each of those moves to the semi-final round. The Canadian Champion is also allowed to compete, starting in the semi-final round.
Contestants are judged on clarity of chant, ability to catch bids, whether judges would hire the guy, and if they believe he would be a good representative of the livestock industry. The stakes are high in this contest, and if you win the world it is like winning the world series. The world champion wins $5,000, a custom belt buckle, diamond ring, use of a new pickup for their year of reign, and numerous other prizes. Perhaps more notable is the impact it has on their career. If you're named a world champion auctioneer, it will give you opportunities never seen otherwise, and you will meet more people than you can count within the livestock industry. You can also only win once. So, once you're named the World Champion Auctioneer of 2009, 2010, etc..., you will always be the World Champion for that year.
It's a big deal to these men, and you hear the best of the best in the profession at these contests.

 This contest was in Colorado. This is an actual salebarn, which hosted the event. The contest was held on a normal sale day, and the guys sold actual cattle to actual buyers. The barn worked extra hard to have a good string of feeders for the guys to sell. What I mean by that is there were over 4,000 weaned calves weighing between 400 and 800 pounds that were sold during the contest.
The contestants go one at a time, and sell eight lots of cattle apiece. One lot is one group, and can be anywhere from a single animal to over 100. Cattle are sorted by owner (no mixing cattle of different owners), sex (steers and heifers), weight, and quality. Each guy sold eight lots because that way the judges get a feel for how he sounds, how clear his voice is, and various other things.
The judges are mixed among the crowd you see, as are the buyers. Usually there aren't this many people at a normal sale, but the contest drew family, friends and observers that normally wouldn't attend. This adds to the competition as the auctioneers have to spot the buyers, and get their bids, without much help.

Before anything happened, a prayer was said, the Canadian National anthem was played out of respect for the Canadian competitor, and the American National Anthem was sung by a local high schooler.
Each contestant would enter the block, which is the box area with the people in it on the far side of the photo. The auctioneer always sells from the block, and there are also a couple clerks, who make sure the cattle are weighed and counted correctly, and penned correctly after being sold based on how whoever buys them wants them penned. Buyers are identified by numbers. So one buyer might be number 105, then he will add additional numbers to sort how his cattle are penned after he buys them. So, he will likely have 105-4, 105-6, 105-7 pens to sort his purchases. I clerked at a salebarn for a year, and it can be a stressful job at times. The barn owner or manager is also usually on the block to set prices, answer the phone, make decision about cattle, etc... These people are all on the block so they can readily see the cattle, and so the auctioneer and owner can see all the buyers, who sit in the stands.
The cattle are sold in what is called the ring. The ring is the pen you see, and it's actually all on a set of scales. Most cattle of this size and age are sold by the pound, so everything is weighed. You can see the information on weight, headcount and price on the computer screen above the ring and block. One of the clerks is who enters this information for every lot.
There is also an entire crew working outside to sort cattle and move them to the ring to be sold, then moving them to the various buyers pens after they're sold. These people also unload and load out cattle all day as they arrive and leave throughout the course of the sale. The running of a salebarn is a complex, intricate thing that requires a lot of precise work by a lot of people for however long the sale lasts.
Anyway, each contestant entered the block, sat down, and gave a brief introduction. Then he would jump right into selling. The barn manager would set the price, and the guy would sell them.

 Meanwhile, the guys in the ring, who are called ringmen, would turn the cattle a couple times so the buyers could inspect them and determine if they wanted to buy them, and at what price.

 For each new owner who was selling, the auctioneer would provide any information of note on the cattle to the crowd. This information might include how long they have been weaned, the diet they've been fed, what shot's they've had, and any other health or nutritional information that may help them sell. Here is my boyfriend reading about this group of steers. Each owner typically has multiple lots, so it's a toss up as to whether a contestant will have to read about one, or several, owner's livestock.

 Then off they go again, chanting away, gesturing for bids, and talking with the crowd.

Here's what it looks like from the auctioneer's viewpoint.

 Roughly two-thirds of the way through selling a lot of cattle, they are let out of the ring, and the next bunch is let in. This keeps things flowing, and prevents a loss of time between each lot. With over 4,000 head to sell, you don't want to waste time between lots. This perfect timing doesn't happen with every lot, but in general a good salebarn can really move through the cattle.
After each guy was done, he would thank the crowd, and the next guy would come up. If it wasn't a contest, the barn's auctioneer would just continue on all day, until every last head was sold.
As I said, there were a lot of great guys at the contest, and I heard a lot of different styles descriptive phrases and comments, and methods of getting bids from the buyers. Of the guys at this contest, around 15 have qualified for the semi-finals, and just under half have placed in the top 10 in the world before. It was pretty stacked, and interesting to watch.

I'm Back

Hello hello, I have not fallen off the earth. I have been in the Big Horn Basin, celebrating my birthday and partaking in multiple fairs for the last few days.
The above photo is a mugshot for a publication that will be publishing one of my articles in the upcoming months. The key reason for posting it is that necklace, which was part of Adam's birthday present he gave me. I love it, and should have taken a wonderful close-up photo to show you all the details (maybe I'll have a chance to in the next couple days). Those are real stones, and it has a silver chain, and I love it!
He went above and beyond for my birthday, and made it very special. We made a quick trip to Yellowstone National Park one day, which was a surprise to me, and he had a vest and hat embroidered with my photography information. I am very blessed.
I also gave my grandma a ride to her brother and sister-in-laws on the way up there, and we had a great trip and got all caught up. One of my goals upon becoming self-employed again was to be able to spend more time with her, and it's been wonderful fulfilling that goal! She is 89 years old, and acts like she's about 65, and is a blast to spend time with.
Adam was super busy auctioneering county fair market sales, hog wrestling calcuttas and announcing rodeos the entire weekend, which I enjoyed tagging along for. I met a lot of people, saw some great steers, hogs and lambs and enjoyed taking rodeo pictures from the crow's nest.
I also took this week off from writing....kind of...to catch up on other projects, and am diving into those today. Hopefully I'll have time to post more pictures and updates on here too!

Calgary Stampede!

Last week, when all those posts were coming in a nice, timely manner...well that's because I scheduled them out that way. I was busy traveling to Canada, where Adam was competing in an auctioneering competition. I went along, wrote one article for a newspaper, and we deemed it a working vacation kind of trip.
We had a blast, and jammed in as much as we could on our week-long excursion. More posts are forthcoming! The big stop for this trip was the Calgary Stampede, which the auctioneering competition was held in conjunction with. Below is a sampling of what we saw during my second and his first trip to the Stampede.


We took full advantage of our contestant and media passes, and took in the famous chuckwagon races from behind the bucking chutes, and along the rail, on two separate occasions.

Perhaps our favorite event we saw was the heavy horse pull. They were BIG horses. We also watched this two days in a row, and were enthralled.

These guys were only the medium weight class, and the winners pulled 11,500 pounds. They were incredibly well trained and very impressive to watch in action.

Of course we took in a cattle show, being who we are. Behind us is the Speckled class, which is Canadian carcass oriented breed. There was quite a variety of quality in the class, so I'm not sure what they're "supposed" to look like, beyond being colored with black and white spots.

We also took in some rodeo action along the rail, which was really the only place we could find to watch it from. There was a huge crowd both days we were on the grounds.

Behind the chutes was another option we had for viewing, thanks to my press pass.

Of course we took in some auctioneering. We spent the first day of the competition at a local sale barn in Strathmore, then watched the final round the following day in the Big Top Tent (that's what everyone was calling it) on the Stampede grounds.

We enjoyed the fireworks associated with the night show.

And watched most of the night show. Sorry Canadians - the Frontier Days combination of a rodeo and a concert is better in my opinion, but I am a Wyomingite too.

These guys were particularly impressive, and I had been telling Adam how much I wish he could have seen them, as they were part of the night show the first time I was at the Stampede. Then, much to my delight, they came onstage!

In conclusion we had a great time, and the people were all very friendly and polite, except the volunteers working at the Stampede. They were ridiculous, and just because they became a volunteer so they could watch all the rodeos and other events for free (and get a powertrip off wearing a weekend badge) doesn't make it okay to jump on any paying spectator whenever they stop walking for more than half a second - that got very old very fast.

Okay, I'm off my soapbox now. All the other people we ran into were exceptionally nice and polite.

The events, booths and educational activities were also great, and we enjoyed looking through the barns, watching shows, and meeting and visiting with people involved in Canadian agriculture. If you've never been, I would definitely say it's worth attending at least once in your lifetime.

Clerking a Hog Sale

On the weekend of April 9 I went to Basin to see the guy, meet his mother (I was nervous, and she knows my family) and clerk a club hog sale. It's that time of year in Wyoming, when 4-H and FFA kids are buying their sheep and hog projects for the year.
Well, I was doing good on getting photos of the happenings, up until the actual people started showing up and the sale started...oops.
We will stumble through with what I managed to capture, and I'll fill in the blanks.

Hogs were provided by two places - the guy and his brother being one (club hogs were one of his FFA projects, and now his brother is taking it over), and another local family. As the pigs were unloaded they were tagged to determine where they came from, washed, and sorted into a number of pens we put sawdust in.


The pens they were sorted into are on the right. The alleyway the girl is in was what was used to bring pigs into the sale ring.


On the far left are where the pigs were penned back. So, the whole system was in the shape of a big U, and worked really well. Pigs would come out of their pens, into the alley, from there to the sale ring, then into the return alley and into another pen.


Pearl and Emmie were there too, and Pearl was in the midst of the whole thing, as usual. Emmie was patiently waiting and seeking affection from strangers during all this. Seeing as how the guy is an auctioneer, we put on a live auction (yep, imagine that). Here he is getting the table and his speakers set up.



We set up straw bales and folding chairs for people to sit on during the auction. One of the things I thought was especially neat was he had the kids bid on the pigs, as opposed to their parents, and gave them plenty of time to make up their minds. It was cute to see how into it some of them got.
Pearl was also a big hit, as she spent the entire sale pacing the fence line of the sale ring, turning back (nipping/biting) any pigs that got too close. Had I not been so busy clerking, and stuck behind the table, I would have put an end to it. But, she wasn't barking, or being too aggressive with them, and the entire crowd found her quite entertaining.
A sale, and a show I guess.


And just like that, when you forget to take pictures, the sale's over and it's time to load out the pigs. Most were packed like this..and no, that's not his car.