Agricultural News
Exciting Time to Sell Cattle at Joplin Regional Stockyards
Tue, 18 Nov 2014 15:11:52 CST
Missouri has many small sale barns around the state with only a few regional sale barns that attract cattle from a four state region. The Joplin Regional Stockyards has a long history in serving cattlemen since the Great Depression. The largest stockyard in Missouri was purchased by Jackie and Kristy Moore and Steve and Shelly Owens in 1986. In 1995 the Joplin Stockyards moved to its current Carthage location. On Monday, Farm Director Ron Hays traveled to the Joplin Stockyards as Radio Oklahoma Network affiliate KRMO, Monett, Missouri had a remote at the sale barn. Hays interviewed Bailey Moore. Click on the LISTEN BAR below to listen to the full interview.
Moore said the Joplin Regional Stockyards has several field representatives in covering the region area within 200 miles of Joplin which includes parts of Missouri, Arkansas, Kansas and Oklahoma.
"That causes us to have a bigger draw area," Moore said. "It's all about numbers here. We don't do percentages, we get so much ahead. The name of the game is to sell has many cattle as we can."
Like many livestock auction barns, Joplin Stockyards has also gotten involved with video auctions. Moore said they started selling via video auctions about 10 years ago. Annually Joplin Stockyards sells about 75 - 100 thousand head of cattle through video auctions. He said this has become an effective marketing tool.
"We can film them today and sell them tomorrow," Moore said. "It works really good for risk management point of view for our customers. We can buy them a load of cattle on Monday and we can turn around and sell those cattle on the video that Monday night. In that instance that looks really good to a banker to have them already bought and already sold."
The strong cattle market is helping producers especially cow-calf producers. Moore said with these record prices producers are rebuilding their cowherd numbers more so today than ever have. He said week after week they are selling big lots of home-raised steers. With the unprecedented prices, producers are able to sell their steers and keep their heifers.
"For the first time in a long time, they are able to sell their steers and have enough money to be able to keep their heifers," Moore said. "From that aspect they are really going to rebuild them in the next couple years."
Moore said the market prices for steers are about what typically what producers would receive for selling both their steers and heifers. He said producers will be able to sell half as many cattle, keep back some of their heifers to replace some of their aging cows and rebuild this cowherd.
Cattle producers know this market will come off these record prices, but that will be a while. The nation's cowherd numbers have been declining for decades, so it will take years before the nation's cowherd numbers stabilize and start to show growth. Moore said margins will be good for cow calf producers for a while. Stockers and feeders will have to pay more for cattle, but the cost to feed cattle has declined with lower commodity prices.
Looking at the future of sale barns, Moore anticipates there will be more regional markets and potentially less smaller cattle markets. As the nation looks to rebuild and increase the number of cattle in the US, that's good for his business and he looks to continue to sell cattle.
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