Small Cows, Big News

This week's updates from the wonderful world of miniature cattle.

Author

Elliott Garber
October 28, 2024

Well howdy, everyone!

Thanks to all our new subscribers in the last week! Please share far and wide with others in our little community who might be interested. You can send them to this link for the easiest free signup.

If you missed the first edition, find it right here.

Isn’t my girl Fiona in the photo above such a cutie?

First Annual Miniature Cattle Market Survey

I’m asking any and all to spend 10 minutes completing this simple survey which will help us all get a better understanding of where we’ve been and where we’re going. We have 91 responses so far (thank you!) but hoping to go way higher so that we have the best data possible.

All entrants who leave an email address when submitting their completed survey will be entered to win one of three $100 Amazon gift cards. Please share widely!

Looking Back at Last Week’s Sales

Last time, I asked you to guess which miniature cattle in the upcoming auctions would bring the highest price. Unfortunately, none of you got it right! That may have something to do with the fact that no one actually made a guess, but hey, these things take time, right? 😅

Drum roll, please . . . it was a tie, at $19,000!

Old Souls Ione, a two-year-old silver AHCA-registered heifer, was sold by the Honey Bee Cattle Co at the Scottish Highland Exchange Fall Sale they put together at the Joplin Regional Stockyards.

And Ella of Cyrus Ridge, a white chondro positive three-month-old high percentage highland heifer (how’s that for a lot of adjectives!) was sold by Cyrus Ridge Farm as a pre-bidding buy-it-now option at the Fall 2024 Mini Scottish Highland Calves & Stock auction.

Any recent private sales that went higher than this? Just reply or email me at [email protected] to let me know!

Surprisingly, the most expensive sale at trendsetting and established Pandarosa Farms’ auction was a chondro positive bottle baby heifer identified as red roan in color, who went for $12,000.

It’s also worth noting that there were quite a few unregistered highland heifers and cows that sold at the Scottish Highland Exchange Fall Sale in the $2000 - 4000 range. Do you think that’s to be expected at a big in-person auction with “grade” cattle? It’s fascinating to me that these same cows can then go on to produce calves which often sell for 2-3 times that amount when bred to the right bull.

Reserve Prices on Auctions: Yay or Nay?

I’ve been buying and selling items through online auctions ever since the early days of eBay. As a teenager, I traded my way up from a starter guitar to a beautiful handmade acoustic that I still use today. It felt like a game, studying the market to understand pricing and trends, and using that knowledge to buy low and sell high more often than not.

My own personal strategy, developed over those years, was to:

  • Start the bidding ridiculously low to get the attention of as many potential buyers as possible. Once they start paying attention or bidding, they’re much more likely to continue.

  • Avoid reserve pricing if confident in the number of potential bidders and my expectations on sales price – based on studying completed listings for similar items.

  • Time or schedule the auction to end on a Sunday evening or whenever the most potential buyers for this particular item might be online.

I now know that these concepts seem to be generally agreed upon by many experienced online auction sellers.

So that’s why I was surprised to see a lot of reserve pricing being used on two recent auctions. And unfortunately not as surprised when a few of these cattle did not meet their reserve prices, leaving our fellow breeders with disappointing results and a bunch of cattle they thought would be on their way to greener pastures by this time. We all hate to see it.

Only four out of 10 cattle listings on this auction met their reserve prices, although they did have a great result with a $15,000 sale for a beautiful highpark heifer.

And only seven out of 18 cattle listings met their reserve prices on this one. Two of the sales were for sub-$1000 mini highpark steers.

Not calling out these breeders or auctions in a negative way at all! Just trying to be realistic and learn so that we can all achieve maximal success in our animal endeavors.

I’m a lot less likely to bid on an auction lot with a reserve price because it can feel like a waste of time to get emotionally involved without knowing if it’s even realistic that I’ll be able to win the item or not. I’d rather see the bidding start at that reserve price, but that’s still not ideal because the seller misses out on some of the key psychological competitive factors that help make the auction process successful.

Again, my recommendation would almost always be to trust the process and let the market pricing do its thing. If – and that’s an important if – you’re confident in having enough potential qualified buyers watching and participating. That’s a a really key piece which I think may be missing from all but the “top tier” of breeder auctions – those with the big social media followings and established brands. Not like me, a relative newbie with only a couple of years in miniature cattle and no social media yet for my program at all. I know that running an auction for my cattle at this point would be asking for trouble.

We’ll dig deeper into that subject again soon.

Upcoming Auctions

Here are the upcoming auctions I’m tracking, but please let me know if I’ve missed any. I would love to feature them here!

Available Now

Ol’ Mel’s Farm in Louisiana has a cute and friendly little silver highland heifer for sale at the very reasonable price of $6000. Scroll their page to see more photos of her.

Jennifer Dyer-Huffines has a handsome six-month-old silver highland bull in Tennessee for $4000.

Please let me know if you come across any unusual and/or especially reasonably priced miniature cattle – I’ll be happy to share with the community.

Until next time

Thanks so much for joining me. I look forward to learning and sharing more with you in the future!

Elliott

P.S. Did you know you can also listen to an audio version of the newsletter by clicking through to the website? It’s a pretty remarkable AI voice, but it does sound kind of similar to my own.

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