This week the market had a steady to lower undertone. With some weights holding steady and others dropping, it really changed up the value of gain.

It paid to be patient and selective while buying this week. For example, when I compare two auctions that are two hours apart, and one the day after the other, five-weight steers were $5 higher, and seven-weight steers were $5 lower at one auction compared with the other. So you can see how the prices can significantly change the value of gain and the price relationships. This is when it pays to go shopping, and to be ready.

There was also a significant price roll-back from steers to heifers. This is when I like to buy heifers. These roll-backs don’t tend to last long and it's easy to capture some value on the heifers when roll-back tightens back up.

Unweaned cattle were $6-10 back this week. Feeder bulls were $12-20 back. I noticed more fleshy cattle this week and they carried a $5 dollar discount. These fleshy cattle were hard weaned and most weighed under 600 pounds. When you wean calves, be careful not to feed them too hard. As you can see, the discount pretty much cancels out the value of weaning them.

Some of the pressure on local markets is due to having a big calf run. Supply outweighs demand. At other auctions the demand for calves is high and it is reflected in the price. Other factors: Harvest is running full song and the weather.

So what do you do if you’re a seller? My best advice is find the market that has been consistently selling cattle a bit higher than surrounding auctions and calculate the freight cost to get them to that one. If it costs $10 to ship them and you can gross $50 per head more that’s easy math.

Southern cattle continue to be undervalued to cattle in the Plains markets.

With the fat cattle market hanging around $1.10, together with the pressure on the feeder market it's opening up more opportunities to replace at a profit. Most of this profit potential is in cattle weighing under 600 pounds. The heavier feeders are still overvalued.

I didn’t see much as far as the female market is concerned this week. The only notable comparison is young bred cows got a little boost.

The highest value of gain this week was claimed by Holstein steers. The lowest value of gain this week also goes to Holstein steers. There was demand for big Holsteins this week. The Holstein market saw bigger value differences than the beef breeds. From one market to the next there could be as much as $100 per head difference for the same weight.

While this is a marketing blog I want to touch on something just briefly that can help boost profit potential and that is stockmanship. Do not confuse stockmanship with low-stress handling as they are different. I point out that certain types of cattle are under-valued or carry a discount. This is mainly due to people not having the ability to handle them. Part of stockmanship is taking the stress off cattle. Take the Southern cattle or weaned cattle, for example. Not everyone can wean a load of comingled bawlers, nor can everyone handle long haul cattle. They are too stressed and very high risk. For the people who have the proper skills, this opens up more opportunities to buy back at bigger profits because they can handle these types of cattle and add value to them.

Just because you may be a multi-generation cattleman doesn’t mean you are inherently born with these skills. In my own experience, it took a great deal of thought and effort to break may bad habits and replace them with better ones (some people pick it up much easier than I did). However, being able to apply this knowledge/skill has paid off greatly for me.

I realize my timing is really poor bringing this up now during the calf run. I should have mentioned it earlier. But there is no better time than the present to learn and improve these skills.