PAYNTON, Sask. – Five years ago Betty Ann and Cameron Stewart stopped taking their bulls to town and have been reaping the rewards ever since.
The Paynton, Sask., couple earns a large part of their living supplying purebred Charolais bulls to the commercial cattle industry from their farm, CSS Charolais.
When they decided to hold their annual production sale on the farm, they “did it right,” said livestock sale manager Ted Serhienko of Saskatoon’s T Bar C Cattle Co. “That is one of the best sale facilities on a farm. Heck, there’s a lot of auction barns that would like to have that setup.”
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Betty Ann said bringing the sale and the buyers to the farm saves time and money.
“There is enough to do around here without having to haul loads of bulls to town for a sale. Renting an auction ring in Lloydminster, which isn’t cheap, then hauling them home. Then we still have to deliver the bulls. It adds time and a lot of cost,” she said.
After 21 years in the purebred industry, the couple calve an average of 250 cows annually. Their late February bull sale falls right in the middle of calving.
“Most of the (other bull sales) are while we are calving so it always meant getting a lot more help when we were trying to sell our 40 or 50 bulls,” said Betty Ann.
Cameron didn’t like taking “10 to this sale and 10 to that one. When you have a program that you are selling to commercial producers, you have a heck of a time doing it in the company of 300 other bulls and 50 other breeders … our business is done mainly with return customers. But our customer today may be somebody else’s tomorrow and we need to do whatever we can to gain and retain them, even beyond giving them good bulls.”
The Stewarts’ herd is built on solid looking animals with deep bodies, heavy muscling, slightly taller and thicker than is currently fashionable, with “the best feet we could develop. These are working bulls that are designed for the range where they see some rocks,” said Cameron.
The bull sale attracts buyers from local ranches and community pastures as well as from Ontario, Manitoba, Alberta the United States and large operations like British Columbia’s Douglas Lake Ranch where more than 40 of the CSS bulls now reside.
Cameron said he travelled to lots of bull sales before settling on a design for their sale ring and the surrounding 16 by 53 metre steel building. Half of the building is dedicated to the sale ring and has removable bleachers that are stored out doors 364 days each year.
Four metres of welded steel framing surrounds the ring. Corner posts made from oilfield drill stem set into large, poured-in-place concrete footings are buried in the soil floor.
A wooden frame retains “quite a few yards of sand” to form an elevated sale ring that lifts the bulls up to the buyer’s eye.
The auctioneer sits above on an elevated platform. A small steel enclosure inside the ring holds a young heifer that keeps the bulls’ attentions during the sale.
When the front of the building is not being used on sale day, large sliding doors open to accommodate the family’s combine, tractors, forage and feeding equipment and truck camper, “and whatever else ends up in a shed.”
The rear half of the facility has long cattle runways with numerous pens and sorting areas and a pair of head-gates for treating cattle and performing artificial insemination.
On sale day the couple’s three sons come home to help, along with neighbours and friends. Bulls are sorted and lined up in front of the swinging doors that deliver them to the ring. The rear area also serves as the calving barn.
“We looked around a lot. The heifer pen (inside the ring) we added after we built the ring. I found that at a sale in South Dakota and kind of borrowed the idea,” said Cameron.
The CSS sale averaged $3,000 per animal in 2003, ahead of many other Charolais sales this season.
Both say the $60,000 investment they have made in their sale ring and shed facility has been worth the cost and effort.
“It might seem like a lot of money for one hour, once a year. But it’s paid for itself in trucking and time and additional sales alone. How much is it worth to you to be able to check your cattle three times on sale day and never have to leave the sale?” said Betty Ann.
