The heart of a bull sale

As a little girl, I always loved the day we held our annual bull sale.  The day started early before the sun was even up.  The crisp December air was always punctuated by the steam rising off the pens of bulls ready to sell, the smell of the pine chips in the sale ring, and the buzz of the friends, family, and potential buyers chatting over the cattle and weather and everything in between.  The excitement and energy of the day were contagious and I reveled in it.

The day was far more stressful for my dad as he dealt with all the logistics, while my brothers worked the bulls in the background and my mom kept the food flowing to satisfy a crowd of empty bellies. With constantly refilled cups of hot cocoa in hand, I walked the pens of bulls, scoured the bull catalog, and meticulously wrote down the price of each animal as it walked out of the ring.

A lot of things have changed since I was a little girl soaking in all the sights, sounds and feelings of a winter bull sale.  You could say that growing a few years older and moving to the other side of the sale ring—buying the animals instead of selling them—would definitely bring changes..  But I’ve noticed it's not just me and my seat at the sale that has changed.  In the years since those first bull sale days, technology has given the sale ring a new look that just might have blown my little girl's mind.

Back in the day, there really wasn’t any other option than to be sitting ringside.  After a few years and the birth of the cell phone, my dad would take calls to help far away buyers get in on a bull or two they had been eyeing from afar.  The clunky phones with just average service made things work but if we could see how things are done now, we would have skipped the phone tag bidding altogether.

Live streaming auctions have expanded the reach of herd sire producers far beyond their usual circle of interest. With the click of a button, buyers across the country can see the animals, calculate how the price fits in their budget and bid in real time, just as if they were in the front row.  Speaking from experience, it makes it entirely possible for a rancher to be sitting port side on a cruise ship ready to set sail yet still able to bid on the future of the herd thousands of miles away.

Sales days aren’t just less stressful for the buyers to try and muddle through, but the crew working the back as well.  Sorting the cattle to their pens, then bringing them through the ring for buyers to eye as the auctioneer chants to the rhythm of the incoming bids, just to take them back out again might sound easy.  But anyone that has worked the sale day will tell you otherwise.  The long day changes significantly when instead of inviting the bull to make an in-person appearance, he shows up virtually on the big screen.  

It may have its limitations, but the trend to keep the bulls down the alley and let the prerecorded strut work its magic is giving cattle sales a new look.  Sleek screens are replacing the messy panels.  Bull bellars aren’t being mistaken for a ringman’s cry.  There’s not more lag time waiting for the ornery bull to make his way into the ring.  

And the technology shaping cattle sales doesn’t stop once the bidding starts. In a world where bull catalogs are packed with numbers and data that can be confusing and hard to decipher, new tools are helping buyers sort through the figures before sale day even arrives. 

Recently at a bull sale, I found myself turning to ChatGPT just to see what the artificial intelligence had to offer, to see how well it actually knew cattle.  To my surprise a few inputs of how we run our operation and what kind of outputs we hope to get out of our bulls, the app spit out just the right figures to help narrow down which bulls might fit our operation best. 

By looking at the EPDs and performance data, it helped prioritize the traits that mattered most for our herd and identified the animals that best matched those goals. In the end, it didn’t make the decision for us—but it did help bring a little clarity and confidence to what we were already looking for.  AI in the cattle world isn’t just about artificial insemination anymore.

For all the screens, streaming, and now even artificial intelligence lending a hand, the heart of a bull sale still feels familiar. There are still good cattle to evaluate, neighbors to visit with, and decisions that shape the future of a herd. The tools may look a little different than they did when I was a girl walking the pens with a cup of hot cocoa in hand, but the purpose remains the same. Whether the bid comes from a seat in the sale barn, a phone across the country, or a computer halfway around the world, it still comes down to cattlemen trying to make the best choice for their herd. And in the end, that part of the sale hasn’t changed one bit.