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Web rounding up cattle auctions

BILLINGS, Mont. — For Montana cattle buyer Jeff Ferguson, finding cattle to suit his clients’ tastes used to mean spending entire days at a sales barn or traveling hours to far-flung ranches. In Wyoming, marketing calves often meant rancher Kevin Forgey had to haul them at least an hour away, sometimes more, with no guarantee he would get the price he wanted.

By Becky Bohrer
Associated Press writer

That was before the Internet and the rise of the online auction.
Forgey can sell calves over the Internet at a price he sets without having to haul them off his ranch first.
And Ferguson can place bids and buy truckloads of cattle for clients in seconds, without ever leaving his chair.

"I bought cattle today in 15 seconds without leaving my office, without even having to shave," he said after one recent live, online auction in which be bought cattle from a Wyoming rancher.
"The times are changing rapidly, so you just use the technology to get cattle for your customers the best that you can," Ferguson said.

A variety of Internet-based companies now provide different examples of online cattle auctions. Some allow sellers to post pictures and information about their cattle online and let potential buyers submit bids, sometimes over a period of several days.

Others essentially televise a live cattle auction over the Internet using "streaming video," allowing potential buyers who live nowhere near the auction house to watch and take part in the bidding. Streaming video has limitations, though, especially for farmers and ranchers living in areas not served by high-speed Internet access.
Other companies, including the California-based Stampede Cattle Co., offer another alternative, one that appeals to Ferguson and Forgey.

Stampede Cattle hosts a live auction that occurs completely in cyberspace. It blends computer animation, sound and real-time, rapid bidding.
Small photographs and brief descriptions of cattle, compiled by company representatives who work with the ranchers, fill a cartoon sales ring on the company’s Web site. Bids are tracked and displayed as they come in. A sales card provides the basics of each lot of cattle up for bid, including sex, base weight and the minimum asking price.

Buyers have a chance to peruse a catalog of available livestock before the sale begins, but the bidding on each lot lasts just 30 seconds. Sellers set the delivery date of cattle sold; buyers arrange transportation. Stampede Cattle charges a commission on sales of 1.5 percent.

"We want to replicate, not replace, the brick-and-mortar sales," said Stampede Cattle co-owner Chris Nelson. But, "we’re using this as a tool to make the current business better."
In October, the first month for the sales, three such auctions were held, trading about 8,000 cattle from across the country. In many cases, the cattle are moved 500 miles or more, Nelson said.

During the most recent auction, bidding on 60 steers from Virginia bobbed between buyers in Kentucky and Indiana. In about an hour that day, roughly 1,600 cattle sold.
Forgey, a third-generation rancher near Casper, Wyo., was among the sellers.
"I’ve tried every way else I could," Forgey, 43, said. "We’ve got a lot of neighbors that are pretty old-fashioned and don’t seem to want to change much. But this is a really good marketing tool."

Though he has been marketing cattle online the past few years to save money and time — the nearest auction is an hour away — he had never before participated in a live Internet auction. He got more than his base price on his weaned calves and figured he would participate in future auctions.
Such electronic auctions may never replace live auctions, where buyers can see the animals live.

But Beth Emter, a spokeswoman for the Montana Stockgrowers Association, said the group supports options that broaden ranchers’ marketing capabilities and make it easier for them to sell their animals.
"We need to take advantage of technology. This is a must. And anything we can do to save money in the long run is a good idea," she said. "In Montana, it’s a long way to the auction barn and simpler to just have a camera on the ranch."

The concentration of buyers is in the Midwest, or "feedlot belt," said Mike Bottin, a regional manager with Stampede Cattle. Sellers tend to be scattered west of the Mississippi River, though Bottin is working to bring in smaller producers on the East Coast — and Virginia, in particular — eager to cash in on the feedlot market.
Bottin said he has been surprised by the level of comfort many buyers and sellers have with the Internet, but said he understands the skittishness others may have with buying cattle online.

"We have to earn our stripes. We are by no means in a business where we can live on our history," he said. "Every time you put up a lot, your reputation is on the line."
Ferguson, who makes a living buying cattle for clients, was facing a six-hour trip to a sales barn the day after the live auction. He said he’d try whatever market he needed to get the cattle his clients wanted, when they wanted the them. He’s even helped design and develop a new Web site for buying and selling cattle that he expected to go online this fall.

http://deseretnews.com/dn/view/0,1249,440014936,00.html

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