A single bull fetched $75,000 during the Mountain View Bull Sale in Innisfail on March 23.
It was the largest amount paid for a single bull at the Innisfail Auction Market in its history.
“We've had some top bull sales and some bulls that pull in $40,000 or so, but to get one animal to bring in $75,000 is fantastic,” auction mart owner Jack Daines said.
Daines described a packed house at the local auction mart when the sale was made. He said about 200 people attended the auction. The $75,000 Charolais yearling was among two bulls brought into the auction ring to start the sale.
“Someone just sitting there in the stands couldn't see $50,000 difference in the bulls, but the people bidding on them knew what they were doing,” Daines said.
The 14-month-old polled Charolais yearling named Pastor was put up for auction by Dory Gerrard of Gerrard Cattle Company, who lives east of Innisfail. Gerrard knew he had a special animal going into the auction. The bull's mother, Roxanne, won a national championship award in the United States a few years earlier. In the auction's sales listing, Gerrard described Pastor as packed with red meat and muscle and with a makeup that is sound and athletic.
“I believe that Pastor has the potential to be one of the true impact sires of the Charolais industry over the next decade,” he wrote.
Gerrard Cattle Company is a fifth-generation family operation that includes 3,000 acres of grain land, 200 cows and a herd of Charolais. Going into last month's sale, Gerrard said there was enough interest in Pastor to get him excited. He figured the sale was going to turn out good no matter what.
“But wow, for it to turn out that good. I was just stunned,” he said.
Rod McLeod of McLeod Livestock in Cochrane purchased the bull.
“We travel up and down the road to all the sales, and all across Canada. When you find certain individuals that are superior in their type and their kind and their muscle patterns, they're a valued commodity. That day it just happened that there were quite a few people that were trying to buy that individual for his genetics,” McLeod said.
McLeod has already sold syndicated interest in the animal's sperm to breeders in Canada, the United States and Australia. The Canadian portion alone is valued at $50,000, he said.
“As soon as the sale was over people were trying to buy interest in him,” McLeod said.
Gerrard said that Pastor's sale brought a lift to his ego. Before then, the highest amount he's ever sold a single animal for was $14,000. But to sell an animal of such high pedigree at such a high amount he described as validating.
“To have something like that happen is a huge ego boost,” he said.
