By David Bowser

SULPHUR SPRINGS, Texas — There was a time when a rancher would unload his cattle at the sale barn, they would run the bovines through the ring, and by the next day, the cattle would be on their way to a feedyard somewhere.

But in a world that is rapidly becoming more complex, the livestock marketing segment of the beef industry is stepping up to face those complexities with improved marketing techniques.

Working with the Northeast Texas Beef Improvement Organization, or NETBIO, Joe Don Pogue, owner of the Sulphur Springs Livestock Market, has conducted three special sales since November 1998, in an effort to group small bands of cattle into uniform lots and guarantee buyers that all the cattle in the sale met certain health and preconditioning standards.

At their first sale almost a year ago, they had 17 different people who bought 2500 calves. Each of the animals had been certified as having had their vaccinations, were castrated and dehorned, and producers provided information on the animals' background including dams and sires.

Pogue says the idea for such sales came from a sale barn in Iowa. A representative of the sale barn came to Sulphur Springs a couple of years ago and talked to the organization about it. The Sulphur Springs sales developed from there.

Working with NETBIO, Pogue has conducted three of these sales to date, selling some 7000 head. Next month, just about a year after his first sale, the Sulphur Springs Livestock Market will host another one.

The requirements for the cattle include vaccinations 90 days prior to the sale; they must be weaned, on feed and water troughs 45 days before the sale, and a second vaccination 30 days prior to the Nov. 10 sale. The cattle have to be castrated and dehorned at least 30 days before the sale.

The required vaccinations include a seven or eight-way clostridial (black leg) administered under the skin — in the neck, not in the muscle; respiratory viruses (IBR, PI3, BVD and BRSV); hemophilus somnus given in the neck, and pasteurella hemolyticum, again in the neck.

The IBR/PI3 must be a modified live virus. Two doses are required for both the IBR/PI3 and hemophilus somnus. The hemophilus somnus vaccine can be combined with the clostridial vaccine.

The pasteurella hemolyticum vaccine must be recognized as leukotoxin type. It may be combined with pasteurella multocida. The dose required is dependent on label recommendations.

"All the calves in the sale have to have their booster shots," Pogue notes.

If the veterinarian doesn't give the shots, he says, the producer has to keep up with the brand name of the vaccine used.

Perhaps most important, all this must be documented. Each producer has to maintain a record of the vaccines including the brand name, components, lot or serial number, dates administered and location of injection.

Other vaccines such as for lepto and medications such as deworming or implants are not required, but the producers are encouraged to consult their veterinarians concerning such actions.

The calves will be classified as preconditioned or freshly weaned.

"The preconditioned calves must be weaned at least 45 days before the sale," Pogue says.

They will take calves fresh off the cow, but they won't be co-mingled with the pre-conditioned calves.

"So far, we've had very, very few calves that weren't preconditioned," Pogue says. "I would say less than 150 head out of 7000."

Both the preconditioned calves and the freshly weaned calves will have to have their vaccinations, be certified by a licensed veterinarian and have a NETBIO identification tag.

"You put an eartag in their ear that says NETBIO on it," Pogue says. "It has my phone number under there. The number on that tag corresponds back to the producer. That way, if you sold 40 calves and they got co-mingled and these calves all got off somewhere and got sick, they can call me back and tell me what tag number was in their ears, and I could go back and see who sold those calves."

The eartags identify the calves in the program and give the stocker or feeder a way to trace them back to the producer.

"We're trying to keep up with the calves and where they come from and make sure everything is done right," Pogue says. "That's why we want to see the BIO tags on their ears. When they get to the feedyard or to the stocker operation, they know where these calves came from and can watch the performance on them."

Of the 7000 calves in the three sales Pogue has had so far, he's only had one person call requesting information on the health protocols used.

"I've had one callback on a group of calves that went to an operation in Oklahoma," Pogue says. "He wanted to know what the vaccination program on these calves was."

After checking the eartags, it turned out that the calves that got sick came from 12 different producers, but this was the only group of calves that got sick. Pogue says the man admitted that he put the calves out with 500 others he put together from a variety of places.

The buyer put them through the chute and doctored them, Pogue says, and they straightened up.

"That's the only question I've had on any calves that have gone through one of these sales," Pogue says. "I've talked to several of the buyers; they've been tickled to death with the health on them."

Pogue says documentation of the health and management of these calves is important to the sale since it assures the buyers of the quality of the cattle going through the ring.

The Sulphur Springs sale barn will record and issue the ID tags to the certifying veterinarian. The vet in his certification will record, among other things, known breeding information. A copy of the veterinarian's certification will go to the sale barn.

"Where it says it has to be certified by a licensed veterinarian, that's a little bit misleading," Pogue says. "A lot of people I know like to work their own cattle. That's fine."

Producers can work their own cattle, Pogue says, but they do have to be certified.

"We try to get the vet or the owner of these cattle to fill out a small information sheet before the sale," Pogue explains. "We know how many calves we've got for the sale, but we'd like to know a little bit about the breeding, a little bit about the operation. We'd like to know a little bit about the cows you have, the kind of bulls you have and the estimated weight of the calves so we can get out some information to our buyers."

The cattle will be weighed upon arrival and sold on their initial weight less a two percent shrink.

They will be sorted by type and weight with the other cattle in the sale and sold in uniform lots.

"We sort these calves as you bring them in," Pogue says, "and you can't believe how many different kinds of calves there are."

"We do weigh them as fast as possible," Pogue says. "We've got two sorting crews. They get the cattle sorted up and get them to the scales as quickly as possible."

The cattle are sorted by type, weight and quality.

"We try to get them within 50 to 75 pounds weight variation in each individual group," Pogue says, "then they're co-mingled with other producers' cattle and offered as uniform lots when they come through the auction ring."

He says what he's after is selling truckload lots, 50,000 pound lots of cattle.

"We've had several, but we've had smaller groups also," Pogue says.

The cattle will be sold in groups.

"You get paid for what your calves weigh," he says. "If my calves go on the scale and weight 500 pounds and I put them in a particular lot and they bring 80 cents a pound, my calves bring $400. If you're my neighbor and you brought in your calves and they're just like mine only they're 25 pounds heavier but they're in the same lot, your calves sold for 80 cents a pound also, but you get paid for what they weigh, 525. They're not sold on the average weight."

All the cattle in the same lot will be sold at the same price to the highest bidder. The selling price for each lot will be multiplied times the initial weight of each calf less the two percent shrink to determine the gross sale price of each producer's calves within the lot.

"These calves are spread out from local places all the way to feedlots in Oklahoma and Kansas," Pogue says. "We want to make sure that these calves have been handled the way they're supposed to be for the sale so we can have a branded product."

He says that when buyers come to a NETBIO preconditioned calf sale they know what they're buying is preconditioned.

"We want to keep a good reputation," Pogue says, "and that's the main reason for these vaccinations and the reason for the vet certification."

Pogue says he'll continue to have his regular sales, both for beef cattle and dairy cattle, but those sales will be separate from the preconditioned sale.

Pogue notes that there is no extra commission for the special sale.

The only extra charge is for the eartag.

"We just charge the producer for what they cost," Pogue says.

The price of the tag is taken out of the sales check. Producers don't pay for the tags when they get them.

The auction puts the cattle on feed after they arrive, are weighed and sorted.

"We put them on good, comfortable hay," he says.

To date, Pogue has been happy with the results of the sales.

"We've been very fortunate to have three good sales," Pogue says. "Last year, the cattle market was kind of tough all year long. We got a good spurt in November. Our first sale was in the middle of November. It was just almost unbelievable to me what the cattle brought."

He says that so far, they've seen two to seven dollars a hundredweight over the market.

"People say, 'have you got any proof of that,'" Pogue says. "We have weekly sales and I'm in the market every day. The only proof I have is what I see."

On their last sale, he says, a producer brought in a group of nice 600-700 pound black cattle for their regular sale and they sold one at a time.

"These heifers brought 65 to 69 cents a pound," he recalls.

The following Wednesday they had their NETBIO sale, and a neighbor brought in the same kind of cattle.

"He had a group of 660 pound black heifers," Pogue says. "They brought 77 cents a pound."

Pogue says the time and effort the producers put in preconditioning the calves should pay off.

"I've been in this business 24 years," Pogue says. "I started out in this business as an auctioneer when I was 16 years old. I've seen things change a whole lot. Looking into the future, I see things changing more."

He sees the special sales as a way to meet the changing needs of the feeding industry.

"These feedyards out here where we've sent cattle for years straight out of the sales," Pogue says, "they don't have the help they used to have. They don't have the cowboys. They don't have the labor to get these calves straightened out like they used to."

Pogue says there are already several feedyards that aren't taking any outside cattle unless they're preconditioned.

"I think we're going to start seeing this narrow down more and more and more," he says. "If we're going to survive, not only the producer, but the sale barn as well, we're going to have to do things a little bit different."

He says he's already seeing fewer bidders on freshly weaned calves.

"Order buying companies don't have the orders they used to have for these calves," he says. "We sell these cattle daily to a smaller number of buyers every day."

Pogue says the buyers are trying to find preconditioned cattle and larger groups of them.