Yesterday

Lot #1

Some friends of ours sold their cows after a lifetime of farming with purebred Holsteins. Health was the issue I guess. When the auctioneer asked them to speak to the crowd, they simply couldn't. I was almost in tears too, because I had a pretty good idea of how they felt. So many years, such beloved animals, and in a couple of hours it would all be gone. We know the auctioneers quite well after years of attending sales and now and then buying a calf or two....they were Dave Rama of the Cattle Exchange and the dean of pedigree readers in the Holstein world, Horace Backus. They spoke very highly of this farm couple and I have never seen them work as hard to get the money out of the cows. Usually auctioneers sell as fast as they can to get people bidding impulsively, but these guys announced right at the start that they were going to take as long as it took on every cow, until they brought what they thought they should.

Horace Backus

They were fantastic cattle, with real deep pedigrees, .... lots of old fashioned sires like Paclamar Astronaut and Paclamar Bootmaker up close. It was a pleasure to see them as we have done a lot of the same kind of breeding over the years. Just sold our last Astronaut a couple years ago and I milk a daughter of one of our Elevations. My favorite yesterday was an excellent 90 Encore daughter and her own daughter. ....great big, deep-bodied black cows with an obvious will to milk.


I would have loved to have bought one, had I the money or the facilities to keep animals of that caliber..we really don't have either. Our barn is probably a couple of hundred years old and we are real hard pressed to house big cows. Mandy has to have a special stall and she barely fits in it. Anyhow, I felt pretty bad for them, but there was a crowd of the top Holstein folks in the region there for a chance to buy their cows. I think that says a lot about how very well respected they are and what a great job they have done at breeding a top quality herd. We had to leave pretty early as our own cows had to be fed, but I hope they did well enough on the sale to take some of the pain out of seeing the cows go down the road. I wish them the best anyhow.