Recently, Senior Farm and Ranch Broadcaster, Ron Hays, had the chance to visit with some of the Oklahomans that were on hand at the World Livestock Auctioneer Championship held in Arcadia, Florida.
Ben Hale currently serves as the president of the Livestock Exchange, which is the group of commission firms at the Oklahoma National Stockyards. Hale’s family owns Western Livestock Commission at ONSY, and they also operate the Comanche Livestock Market, the Woodward Livestock Market, and they have a livestock market in Knoxville, Iowa.
“We gripe about the packer, how much control they have of it, and the reason they have it is because there is no competition,” Hale said. “I know people like to forward contract cattle and sell them in the country, but the problem is, if we don’t have options, you don’t know what your cattle are worth in the country.”
For the business to remain successful for generations to come, Hale said the auction method must continue to be utilized. Without selling cattle through live auction, Hale said there will come a time when cattle cannot be priced.
“I want to keep it competitive and keep it local,” Hale said.
Hays also had the chance to talk with Justin Dodson, an auctioneer who lives in Welch, Oklahoma, and sells in Missouri and Kansas. Dodson has been involved with the World Livestock Auctioneer Championship contest for many years.
This year, for the 14th time, Dodson was a top ten finalist in the contest. Dodson said the auctioneer business was not easy to get into at first.
“One thing that helped me, though, is I had a background in cattle,” Dodson said. “That was a big plus. It takes years of practice to hone your skills.”
Each auctioneer’s “filler words” are different, Dodson said, and a big part of his development was finding the right filler words that were clear and easy to hear.
Dodson said there is more to just “sounding good,” and it is important to have value and clarity in what is being said.
“I wanted to be a crystal-clear auctioneer where someone who comes to the livestock auction maybe once a year or maybe never before, hopefully they can understand what I am saying,” Dodson said.
The Beef Buzz is a regular feature heard on radio stations around the region on the Radio Oklahoma Ag Network and is a regular audio feature found on this website as well. Click on the LISTEN BAR for today’s show and check out our archives for older Beef Buzz shows covering the gamut of the beef cattle industry today.
