Higher number of producers leaving cattle industry this fall

Nov 18, 2022

The fall cattle run is producing some high numbers of animals going through the sales ring and that includes Killarney Auction Mart.

This past week’s sale on Monday saw 1,405 head sold.

Owner Allan Munroe says he’s never seen a fall run like this one. “We’ve had one of our busiest fall runs ever. We started out in September with pretty good numbers and every sale has been sold out right from Thanksgiving on and it will continue that way right into December.”

Prices have been good, and Munroe says some changing dynamics are behind the higher-than-normal number of cattle being brought to auction.

We are selling more dispersal cows than ever before. We started earlier and our first full dispersal was last week, and we have sales every week. We have an annual sale December 3rd, but we have five other bred cow sales and those are all filled with either dispersal, major reductions or some bred heifers and there’s none of the sales with five or 10 cows from here and there. There are tremendous opportunities for anyone looking for cows to buy some quality stock that we haven’t seen come to town in the past number of years,” said Munroe.

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Video: Learning to Wrench From Dad the Hard Way

Harvest is a week out and the farm picked this week to fall apart. The truck needs a battery, the barn curtain's got a problem, and the corn and beans are telling us we're out of time to get it all fixed.

So it's a full day of wrenching. Tork supervises while I get the truck back running, then we're out at the hog barn where one rusted up part has the whole curtain system hung up. Ladder work, cable work, and a little dad-and-son disagreement about the right way to do it. We close it out walking the fields, shelling beans and checking corn, because whether everything's fixed or not, harvest starts when harvest starts.

Chapters: 00:00 Everything breaks the week before harvest 01:00 Tork supervises while I fix the truck 12:30 Out to the barn to find the curtain problem 14:30 One rusty part hung up the whole curtain 20:00 Running the curtain cable from the ladder 24:00 Walking the beans and corn before harvest 26:30 Wrapping up

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