The February Data Drop: 70 Animals Across Four Sales

Howdy friends,

Four sales hit in February, two on Super Bowl Sunday, and together they moved 70 live animals for just over $750,000. The data tells a remarkably consistent story across very different catalogs, formats, and consignors. And one animal broke $40k, which we should talk about.

Let's dig in.

Pandarosa Ranch Valentine's Sale — Dawson, IL (Feb 2026)

By the Numbers

• Lots sold: 29

• Gross sales: $246,742

• Median price: $6,750

• High seller: Carina (Lot 14), $19,506. Highpark micro/mini heifer, chondro-positive, Cold Brew daughter.

• Heifer median: $10,750 vs. steer/bull-option median of $5,300, a 2× multiplier

This was a big, mixed catalog (12 heifers and 17 steers and bull options) and it gave us a pile of useful data.

The real ceiling was micro/mini females, not just "good heifers." The top end clustered around a specific profile: micro or micro/mini, female, often chondro-positive, Cold Brew or Joker sired, bottle baby. That combo pushed pricing into the $16.7k–$19.5k range consistently. Nothing outside that profile touched it.

Cold Brew was the gravitational center of this sale. Eight of 29 lots were Cold Brew-sired (about 28% of the catalog) and they grossed roughly $87,400, or about 35% of total revenue. Even the non-elite Cold Brew calves avoided the bargain bin. He’s a mini red HighPark with pretty traditional markings, so this was interesting. It wasn't a single outlier driving the numbers. Buyers seemed comfortable bidding aggressively on the sire without overthinking individual variance.

Joker quietly did something similar on the Panlander side. Five Joker-sired lots ranged from $3,400 to $18,500. The females (Rosie at $16,785, Dolly at $18,500) were elite. But Joker's floor was lower than Cold Brew's, which matters if you're evaluating breeding programs.

Chondro-positive wasn't a liability. It was a tool. Chondro-positive animals dominated the top quartile when paired with female sex and micro size. But chondro-positive bull-option steers still got discounted unless they had elite color or tiny frames. Buyers are context-pricing chondro now, which is more sophisticated than even a year ago.

Polled mattered more than anyone's saying publicly. Dolly (polled micro heifer) landed at the top tier. Polled steers quietly avoided the commodity pricing floor. This looks like a silent premium. Buyers are acting on it even if the Facebook comments are still more favor of horns.

The steer market is fully split. Pet-grade steers landed $3.4k–$5.3k. Flashy, micro, polled, or influencer-ready steers hit $6.5k–$8k+. Almost nothing in between. If you're breeding steers, you're either pushing upmarket or accepting volume pricing. The middle is gone.

Bull-option math is getting harsher. Seven bull-option lots averaged $6,664, right around the overall sale median, but three of the seven were under $4k. Buyers are pricing in castration likelihood, semen-rights restrictions, and the opportunity cost of just buying a finished bull somewhere else.

Webb Cattle Co. Super Bowl Sunday LX Bid-Off (Feb 8)

By the Numbers

• Lots sold: 17 (Lot 10 was pulled prior to the auction)

• Gross sales: $212,000

• Median price: $9,500

• High seller: Referee / Little Sarah (Lot 8), $41,000. Black/white riggit-pattern heifer, polled, chondro-positive, micro/mini.

• Notable: 15 of 17 lots were heifers. A heavily female catalog, which is important context for the strong median.

The $41,000 lot is the marquee number from all four February sales. Referee / Little Sarah stacked every premium trait available: riggit color pattern, polled, chondro-positive, micro/mini, heifer. She's the product of an embryo pairing between Rick (riggit Galloway) and Princess (red chondro Highland). That kind of intentional genetic planning is exactly how breeders create outlier results, and the market responded accordingly. I thought it was interesting to see a new color pattern demanding such a premium here. Roan and flashy Highpark calves have been top sellers in other auctions over the last couple of years. Are there other patterns that may be in the works for the mini highland cross crowd?

For context on the rest of the sale: with Lot 8 set aside, the remaining 16 lots averaged $10,688 with the median essentially unchanged. That tells you the depth of this catalog was strong on its own. The $41,000 result was the cherry on top, not the whole sundae.

HighPark consistency was the quieter story. HighPark lots clustered $10,500–$16,000, showing tight price compression. Buyers understand the product and bid with discipline. When you see that kind of consistency in a category, it means the market has internalized what a HighPark heifer from Webb is worth, and it's solidly five figures.

Sibling pricing told interesting stories. Lots 2, 3, and 4 were all OhYeah × Sparkie embryo siblings: three dun heifers at $8,500–$9,500. Lots 11 and 12 were Cowboy × Cupcake siblings, both chondro-positive dun HighParks, but Game Day brought $16,000 while First Down brought $10,500. The difference? First Down had frostbite-related smaller ears. That $5,500 gap on full siblings is a useful data point for anyone pricing calves with minor cosmetic disclosures.

The two bulls found the floor. $4,500 and $5,250, roughly half of the heifer median. Same pattern as every other sale this month.

Worth noting: the catalog was split between two consignors. Webb's own lots (12 head) averaged $14,563, while the Circle AM consigned lots (5 head) averaged $7,450. That's a big gap on paper, but the two groups were selling very different animals. Webb's offerings leaned micro/mini HighPark; Circle AM brought AHCA-registered midsized Highlands. Breed type and size class likely explain most of that spread, not consignor alone.

Highlands of the Heartland Valentine's Day Mini Cow Collection — Maquoketa, IA (Feb 8)

By the Numbers

• Lots sold: 6

• Gross sales: $53,100

• Median price: $8,000

• High seller: Sugar Plum (Lot 2), $15,000. Micro/mini Highland cross heifer, chondro-positive.

This was a smaller sale than our others, but it confirmed every pattern we saw in the bigger catalogs, which makes it useful as a pricing snapshot.

Heifers averaged $12,167. Bulls averaged $5,533. Three and three. Clean split, same story as everywhere else.

The two chondro-positive animals were both heifers, and both topped the sale at $14,000 and $15,000. With only six lots it's impossible to separate the chondro premium from the heifer premium cleanly, but the one chondro-negative heifer (Sweet Pea) sold for $7,500, which at least suggests both factors were at work.

The most interesting lot was the bull. Mags (Lot 6), a Highland bull with no chondro and no size premium, born July 2025, brought $8,500. That's more than Sweet Pea, a heifer. Why? He was the oldest animal in the sale and nearly ready to wean. Buyers put real dollar value on "take home now" versus waiting until June for a bottle baby. Among bottle babies the age differences didn't seem to matter. But the jump from bottle to weanable? That clearly does.

Rocking L Ranch via Micro Mini Cattle Sales (Feb 22)

By the Numbers (Live Animals Only, Lots 1–18)

• Lots sold: 18

• Gross sales: $238,200

• Median price: $13,500

• High seller: Coco (Lot 15), $29,000. Breeding-age micro miniature female, chondro-positive.

• Full sale gross (including embryos and straws): $296,700

This sale brought something we haven't seen before in the newsletter: cloned animals. And the market didn’t seem to be too impressed.

The clone reality check is the headline. Four Puffy-Puff clone lots (all micro, black, chondro-positive heifers) sold individually at $8,000–$8,500, and as a twin bundle at $17,500 ($8,750/head). The "historic clone" marketing didn't translate into trophy pricing. It translated into an $8k–$9k clearing price. The market treated clones like a repeatable product line, not a once-in-a-lifetime collectible. That's a big, shareable insight.

And the economics behind those clones are worth thinking about. Trans Ova Genetics, the dominant U.S. livestock cloning provider, charges $21,000 for a contracted cloned calf, plus $1,750 upfront for genetic preservation. Because the process is still relatively inefficient (Trans Ova transfers roughly 8–10 embryos per calf ordered), sometimes multiple pregnancies survive. Those "over-production" calves are offered to the buyer at $10,000 each for the second and third, and $5,000 for any beyond that. Buyers are contractually required to take them all.

So the best-case math for five Puffy-Puff clones might look something like $21,000 + $10,000 + $10,000 + $5,000 + $5,000 = $51,000 in calf fees, plus the $1,750 GP fee, plus recipient/surrogate costs. The worst-case math, if those five were contracted individually, could run well over $100,000. Either way, those five clones returned $42,000 at auction. The direct-sales ROI is underwater no matter how you frame it.

That doesn't mean cloning is a bad decision. The value likely lives downstream: in semen sales, embryo production, show-ring branding, or simply preserving an irreplaceable animal's genetics for a long-term breeding program. But if someone's cloning calves to flip at auction, this sale gave us the clearest data yet on why that math doesn't work.

The breeding-age female premium was massive. Coco at $29,000 was a different universe from the rest of the sale. Remove her and the highest remaining lot was $17,500 (the clone pair). With Coco removed, the live-animal median drops to $13,000. Buyers paid up hard for a ready-to-work female, even in a catalog packed with flashy calves and historic clone marketing.

"Suspected" chondro status didn't spook buyers. Most of this catalog used "test pending" or "suspected" language rather than definitive chondro results. Pricing didn't show a penalty for it. Buyers priced on phenotype and size class regardless. Whether that's market maturity or willful optimism is worth watching.

Genetics were priced like a totally different product. Embryos cleared at roughly $944–$1,667 per embryo. Straws ranged from $300–$700 each. To put that in perspective: one $15,000 heifer equals 9–15 embryos or 20–50 straws, depending on the package. Genetics are being treated as "access," not "rarity."

The February Market: What All Four Sales Tell Us Together

Seventy animals. $750,000. Four different sellers, formats, and locations. Here's what held up across all of them.

The micro/mini heifer price band is locked in. $14k–$16.5k at Pandarosa, $14.75k–$16k at Webb, $14k–$15k at Heartland, $13k–$16.5k at Rocking L. That kind of consistency across four independent sales is the strongest market signal we've seen. If you have a micro/mini heifer with decent genetics, you know what she could be worth.

The heifer-to-bull multiplier is running 2× across the board. Pandarosa: $10,750 heifer median vs. $5,300 steer/bull-option. Webb: $9,500 median heifers with bulls at $4.5k–$5.25k. Heartland: $12,167 heifer mean vs. $5,533 bull mean. Rocking L: $15,000 heifer median vs. $10,500 bull median (inflated by one strong bull; remove him and the gap widens). No matter where you look, females command roughly double.

Chondro is being priced as a feature, not a flaw. Across all four sales, chondro-positive animals appeared at the top of the results, but only when paired with the right sex, size, and presentation. Chondro-positive + micro + heifer = top tier. Chondro-positive + mid-size + bull = discount. The market isn't treating chondro as a binary good or bad anymore. It's pricing it in context. That's a sign of a maturing buyer pool.

The steer/bull market has fully bifurcated. There's pet-grade ($3.4k–$5.3k) and there's flashy/micro/special ($7k–$12k). The middle is empty. If you're producing steers, you're either investing in the traits that push them upmarket (micro size, unusual color, polled, extreme hair) or you're accepting commodity pricing. There's no coasting to $6k anymore.

Sire branding matters more than ever. Cold Brew anchored Pandarosa. Pretty Boy and Cowboy drove Webb's HighPark pricing. Bunny's straws commanded premiums at Rocking L. Buyers are increasingly bidding on sire reputation as a shortcut for quality assessment. If you're standing a bull, your marketing job just got harder. And more important.

One more thing worth watching: the gap between "ready now" and "pick up in June." Most February calves won't wean until summer, which means buyers are putting money down months before they take delivery. The Heartland bull that outpriced a heifer because he was weanable tells you there's latent demand for animals that can go home sooner. Sellers who can offer earlier delivery dates, or who raise calves to weaning before listing, might be leaving money on the table by defaulting to the standard timeline.

Upcoming Auctions

Got a sale I'm missing? Reply and let me know.

• Feb 28: Ridge & Valley Appalachian Almost Spring 2026 Miniature Highland Cow Auction

• March 8: Highland & Mini Cattle LUCKY CHARM Consignment Online Sale

• March 8: Cyrus Ridge: March 2026 Mini Scottish Highland Calves

Four sales in. The 2026 market is talking. It likes tiny. It likes female. It likes known sires. And it's getting more sophisticated about pricing chondrodysplasia, clones, and export terms by the month.

If you're planning spring breedings, I hope this is helpful!

Until next time,

Elliott

P.S. — Creatures is the marketplace and record management platform I'm building for our community. Whether you're buying, selling, or just keeping track of your herd, it's designed around transparency and real data. We're also planning our first sale event and I'd love to feature some standout animals. If you've got one you think belongs in the catalog, hit reply and tell me about it.