Selling Livestock at a Sale Barn

The smell of smell of livestock and the auctioneer speaking loudly over the microphone is just part of the atmosphere at a livestock sale barn. For those people who have not ever been to a sale barn, the atmosphere of this place could seem very odd and highly overwhelming, but for those people who live in rural America and are involved in agriculture this is just a part of life. The role of sale barns is to be a marketplace for the buying and selling of livestock. Livestock sold at sale barns most commonly include; sheep, goats, buffalo, cattle and horses. Each breed of animal will be sold on different days and most sale barns only sell one or two species of animals. The aspects and processes that take place at a sale barn would be quite foreign for those people who have never been to an animal auction. There process of selling animals at a sale barn is fairly simple.

If a person is attending the sale to sell animals they follow a set of specific steps to sell their animals. For bred animal, breeding stock and feeding animals sales most sale barns will release a sale bill or catalog prior to the sale listing the animals that will be sold. These sale bills are most generally printed in a local agricultural newspaper and then are given to buyers at the sale barn. In order, for a person to be able to list their animals in the sale bill they must call the sale barn and tell them about the animals they will be bring to the sale and they often have to pay a fee to do this. At most sales people can bring animals to the sale barn that they have not listed prior to sale day. These animals will be usually sold before the advertised animals or at the end of the sale. When a person takes animals to a sale barn with out listing them the animals that they are taking to the sale are most generally animals that will be going to slaughter or are a few random animals that they would like to get rid of.

When a seller arrives at the sale barn the first thing that they will do is to unload there animals into the pens located behind the sale barn. Most sale barns have a shoot or area where a person will unload livestock from a cattle or horse trailer and then loading shoots where people unload livestock that are loaded on semi trailers. At these locations there will be a yard man or a few yard men to help a person unload and mark the cattle. The brand inspector will also be at that location in order to examine the animals and take the sellers G-Form or other proof of ownership. A G-Form is a form that a seller gets before shipping their cattle into another state or sometimes counties that lists those animals that they are taking to the sale barn. The yard men will give the seller a sheet of paper stating the livestock that the seller will be selling and the identification placed on those animals so that the secretaries will know whose livestock is in the sale ring. The seller can then take that sheet of paper into the office and give it to the secretaries. The secretaries will then take down additional information so that the sale barn will know to whom to write the check for the animals and to where to send the payment. If a seller has sold at that sale barn before they will not need to talk to the secretaries they will simply tell the yard men what the name on the account is and the office staff will know where to send payments.

A seller does not receive the full amount that their livestock sells for at the sale. The sale barn receives a commission out of the sale price for selling the animal at their facility.