From the Field
A Winter to Remember (or Forget)
By Andy Rest, NALF regional manager
February 2019 for livestock producers across the
nation will long be remembered as one of the
toughest in recent memory. In my hometown,
Billings, Mont., we recorded the second coldest
February on record and had record snowfall as well.
My travels in February took me to sales in South
Dakota, Iowa, Kansas, Wisconsin and Saskatchewan.
Many days saw extremely cold temperatures and
snowy days. The morning of the J. Yorga Farms
sale on February 25 in Canada, it was -30C and we
still had one of the best sales of the season. The
trip to the Spring Creek Bull sale on February 17 in
Fennimore, Wis. tested my winter driving skills. It
snowed probably 5 inches during the day but it’s
a tribute to the local Wisconsin cattlemen that we
had a near capacity crowd on hand for the sale!
For the week of February 18-23 in South Dakota,
temperatures where getting down to -30F at
night and many times did not hit zero during
the day. The high wind and snow made travel
slow and difficult. The Lonely Valley sale set for
February 23 in Creston, Neb. had to be postponed
because of a severe blizzard. It was easy to spot
the strain on the faces of many cattlemen at
these sales as they struggled to keep their cow
herds fed, sheltered and begin spring calving.
In other parts of the country like Oklahoma,
Missouri and throughout the Southeast, cattlemen
have had to deal with a tremendous amount of
rain and mud. Early spring tornados in Alabama
and South Carolina have also caused tremendous
damage and hardship to many producers.
50 | APRIL 2019
Throughout all the tough sale days, the good
news is the demand for the high-quality bulls
remained strong. In the northern part of the
country, for the second straight year, I’ve seen
solid demand for the top red, homozygous
polled herd sire prospects. Not to be outdone,
the demand for quality homozygous black and
homozygous polled bulls is still very strong.
Another plus was I visited with several commercial
cattlemen who were either buying their first
Limousin or Lim-Flex bulls or buying for the
first time in several years. Several of them said
they wanted to take advantage of the Limousin
breed’s strong carcass qualities and the pounds
they can add to their weaning weights.
Because of the extremely cold weather up North
I would encourage all of you to semen test your
bulls this spring before turning them out. My
guess is that more bulls will be lost this spring than
normal. Encourage your commercial customers to
test their bulls also. It will be interesting to see if
this will have an impact on some of the later sales.
As you read this in April, hopefully things have
warmed up and your calving has (or is going)
gone well. The benefit of all the snow is that
once it starts warming up there should be
plenty of moisture to get the grass started.
If I can help you at any of the April sales please
feel free to give me a call, text or email. I