Bred Heifers Top Torrington at $3585

Torrington, WY., November 19, 2024 — The bred cow sale last Friday was larger than years past, but the real news is the hot bred heifer market in Torrington, Wyoming.

Lander Nicodemus said Friday’s 4100-head bred cow sale was the largest he’s seen in his decade at the state’s largest livestock market. Nov. 18, though, the gavel didn’t drop until well after 8 p.m. on the last bred heifer.

“It was wild,” he said. “I think we topped the day with Oschner’s black baldy heifers at $3585, and sold a lot of those heifers at $3000 or better. If you look at the past couple of years, we had the really bad drought in 2022 and then we were faced with super high feed prices through that winter of ’22 through ’23 and even though we had great prices last fall on calves, I think a lot of guys were still healing up from the previous couple of years. This year they got record prices again for their calves and it looks like feed is going to be a lot more affordable – maybe even call it cheap – and there’s a lot of guys that have maybe gone the last couple years being under stocked and they’re ready to reload.”

With a few exceptions to the Midwest, most of the bred females – 2,200 through the barn and another 500 on video -  are staying in the region’s cowherds.

Those 48-head of high-selling Oschner heifers weighed an average of 1132 and the crew at Ochsner Roth said Torrington Livestock’s representation of the February and March calving heifers and the bidders in the seats were all excellent.

Source: Western Ag Network