I decided to take a trip to the Poorboy Livestock Auction

This week, I took some cows to the “new” sale barn in Wister, it’s called Poorboy Livestock Auction. The “old” sale barn is Leflore County Livestock auction.

I do business with both of them, but this time I sold my cattle at Poorboy because it was on Friday and I’ve got fami-ly coming in this weekend. I didn’t want to be at the sale barn on Saturday, the LeFlore county sale barn has its sale every Saturday morning.

I sat in the stands and paid close attention to what different types of cattle were bringing. An old bull brought $1.70 per pound, he weighed 1,630 pounds and was marked as 0, which means old. A 3-year-old cow with a 300-pound calf, the cow was also bred back, brought $3,500. It was interesting to me to watch what some of the top sellers were.

I had some good black cows with huge calves on their sides. The sale barn separated them. I had a couple of calves bring more than $1,500. A couple of the cows brought more then $2,000, and they weren’t bred back. That works out to $3,500 per pair (cow, plus her calf).

I’ve sold some highdollar horses over the years. I guess I can say I’ve sold some high-dollar cows, now. For several years I always budgeted my farm on selling a $400 calf. It was just maybe five years ago that I upped my budget to a $500 calf.

I hope the cow/calf market stays up. My great uncle told me, in the 1960’s, he could take ten calves to the sale barn and they would bring enough money to buy a brand new pickup. Even as high as the calf market is right now, I don’t know of a pickup you can buy for $20,000, which is about what ten top selling calves will bring in the current market.

It was a good day to be at the sale barn. I visited with several friends and ate some good food. As I drove home, I remembered all the calves the old No. 41 cow raised over the years. She was one of the ones I sold. She had to be at least 15 years old.

I always liked watching her, she was a gorgeous black Brangus-type cow. She was very protective of her calves, she never lost one and had a calf every year. She would lead half the calves away from the lot at times, but she was so pretty and produced such good calves I always kind of forgave her when it came time to wean calves.

I was happy with the check I had in my pocket, but also kind of sad. I sure like those big pretty cows that have a calf every year. It was kind of sad letting some of them older cows go.

Ecclesiastes 3 says there’s a time for all things, a time to plant and a time to harvest. God must have been a farmer.