Lessons from Mainline breeding stock sale
LAST week I had an opportunity to attend a breeding sale hosted by one prominent butchery owner in Plumtree Town, Mainline.
He was selling about 150 breeding stock composed of a range of animals of varying ages from weaners, long weaners, bullying heifers to cows with calves on foot. The sale was on his pens which are located about 20 kilometres from Plumtree Town towards Bulawayo.
It was attended by a number of livestock enthusiasts which included buyers, farmers and sellers who had also brought some slaughter stock for disposal. As always, I make it a point to pick out lessons from such an event and share with the wider livestock community in the country and beyond.
It was interesting and perhaps refreshing to witness a protracted tug of war between the buyers and Mr Mkhulunyelwa Nkomo, the owner and seller of the breeding stock on offer. To the uninitiated, Mr Nkomo was almost being unreasonable as I picked whispers and murmurs from the contingent of onlookers. In their view he was being unreasonable as he kept declining most bids offered by the buyers.
In their view this was disturbing the fluency of the auction as the farmer kept declining from one parcel to another.
However, to those fully acquainted with the theatrics of a livestock auction system we knew that it was just a muscle flexing session as buyers and the seller tried to stamp out their authority and mark territory boundaries. The statement from the seller’s action was very clear, “give me a reasonable price or you are not going to get my animals for a song”.
On the other hand, buyers were pushing their usual bullying tag line “we are the ones holding the purse, the piper will play our tune”. The major lesson for farmers who were present on this sale and those reading this article is that, never go to an auction sale determined to sell your animal no matter the circumstances.
With that mental configuration you are more likely to be a candidate for donating your animal to the buyers than engaging in a genuine business transaction. Have it in your mind that you may meet buyers who are simply not in the mood to spend and will only be prepared to offer you sick money.
You should therefore be prepared to reject such an offer and hoof or transport your animal back. If by the time you go to the auction you have already spent half of the value of the animal on borrowing this and that from your local tuck shop, then you are setting yourself for a loud fall!
As a seller you should have confidence in what you are selling and be able to set a floor price for your animal below which you should decline the offer. This is what Mr Nkomo did, he knew what each animal was worth on a minimum scale and he gladly declined when the bid was below his expectation.
Obviously, there will be negotiations between the buyers and the seller via the auctioneer and half the time the two will agree if what’s being offered by the buyer is closer to what is being asked for by the farmer.
Farmers are usually pushed to sell by the frustration of having to transport the animal back home, incurring another cost. Buyers know that and they prey on it. However, it is important to know that when buyers come to buy, they usually target to get a truck load which is about 25 animals for horse and trailer trucks.
So, they are also not without desperation themselves because if the animals are not enough to fill a truck, transport cost becomes higher. Mr Nkomo was at his farm and he could easily hoof his animals back to the veld. This tells us that it is advantageous for us as farmers to revive the sale pens that are closer to us so that we can sell our animal in places where we can easily mangweni them with no fear of transport cost back home.
Most of us smallholder livestock farmers have let our local sale pens die and now we have to go far to sell our animals and this exposes us to buyers’ abuse.
Lastly, like I have always said quality will move you places. Mr Nkomo’s animals were of good quality although he could have done much better by finishing them off in pens before taking them to the market. You want them shinny and all the ribs covered. An attractive animal pushes itself up when it comes to bidding. Otherwise it was an excellent show by Mr Nkomo we hope this will become an annual event.-sundanews
