Timed Online Sale, Sale Barn or Video Auction: What Fits a Ranch Sale

A ranch with cattle to sell has more than one way to sell them, and each way was built for a different job. The sale barn in town, the video auction and a timed online sale on your own sale website all move cattle. The question is which one fits the cattle you have and the buyers you want.

What Does a Sale Barn Do Well?

The local sale barn is the simplest way to turn cattle into a check. Haul them in, they sell through the ring that day or that week, and the barn handles the buyers, the weighing and the settlement. The barn runs on a schedule, so there is a sale coming whether you are ready or not, with a set of order buyers and local ranchers who show up for it.

That makes the sale barn a good fit for feeder calves, cull cows, small bunches of commercial cattle and anything that needs to go now. The barn charges a commission and yard fees for that service.

What the sale barn does less well is tell your story. A registered bull or a pen of bred heifers you spent two years on goes through the ring in a minute or two, in front of whoever is there that day. Buyers who are not in the building cannot bid.

What Does a Video Auction Do Well?

A video auction brings the sale to buyers who are not in the building. A representative films the cattle at the ranch, the footage and a description go into a catalog, and the cattle sell through a live auctioneer to buyers watching the broadcast and bidding by phone or online. The cattle stay home until delivery, which saves shrink and a haul before the sale.

Video auctions were built around load lots: truckload groups of feeder calves, yearlings and sometimes bred females, sold to buyers across the country who take delivery weeks later. For a ranch with a load of uniform calves, a video auction puts them in front of order buyers and feedlots from many states without the cattle leaving the pasture.

The ranch consigns to the sale company's event, on the company's dates, under the company's terms and fee schedule, in a catalog alongside other consignors' cattle. Bidding on each lot lasts as long as the auctioneer's chant. A single registered bull or a small group of females does not fit the load-lot format well.

What Does a Timed Online Sale Do?

A timed online sale runs on your own sale website, built and hosted by us. The catalog goes up weeks ahead. Bidding opens for the days you choose, and every lot closes at the set time, with extended bidding on any lot still drawing bids in the final minutes. There is no auctioneer and no video feed. Buyers study the lots and bid on their own schedule from a phone, tablet or computer.

What that format does well:

• Time. A buyer gets days to go over EPDs, pedigrees, videos and health details instead of a minute in the ring.
• Detail. Each lot carries as many photos, videos and PDFs as you want to attach, with your own notes beside them.
• Reach. A buyer several hundred miles off can bid without making the drive, and one who is busy on sale day can bid the night before.
• Your name on it. The sale runs on your website, with your look, and the buyers who register belong to your buyer list.
• The fee. A one-time setup fee and a flat annual fee, with no commission and no per-head charge. The annual fee covers unlimited sales.

In our most recent cattle sale, 27 lots sold over three days to buyers registered from eight states, and bidding added 29% over the opening prices. That is one sale, and we cannot tell you what yours would bring. How it works walks through the whole process.

Where Does a Timed Online Sale Not Fit?

• Alongside a live sale ring. It is not built to run with a live auction. There is no auctioneer, no video feed and no way to take ring bids and online bids on the same lot at the same time.
• Cattle that need to sell this week. A timed online sale takes a catalog, a few weeks of lead time and some promotion. The sale barn is faster.
• Commercial cattle sold by the pound. Lots on the platform sell for a total price, one head or a group. Load lots of feeder calves priced per hundredweight are what the video auctions were built for.
• A ranch that does not want to run the sale. You load the lots, set the terms, promote to your buyers and collect the money, while we build and host the website and run the software. If you would rather hand all of it to someone else, consign.

How Do You Decide?

Match the method to the cattle and the buyers.

Feeder calves and culls going to town this month: the sale barn. A truckload of uniform calves for delivery in sixty days: a video auction. A production bull sale, a bred heifer sale, a dispersal, or a consignment sale where the organizer wants the catalog online for weeks and the buyer list afterward: a timed online sale on your own sale website.

Many ranches use more than one. The culls go to town, the calves sell on video and the registered bulls and bred heifers sell online. See online bull sales, bred heifer sales and consignment sales for how each kind runs on the platform, and the pricing page for how the fee works.

Not Sure Which Way Fits?

Tell Tom what you have to sell and when. If a timed online sale is not the right fit for those cattle, he will say so. Get in touch with Tom.