Red Deer County 2025 Bull Sale Report (and other bull sale season thoughts)
Red Deer County 2025 Bull Sale Report (and other bull sale season thoughts)
It was a gorgeous spring day, with unseasonably warm temperatures, that brought a capacity crowd to the Innisfail Auction Market to see a diverse, multi-breed Red Deer County Bull sale on Saturday, March 8th. Now in our 15th year of consigning to this sale, it has steadily evolved and now includes a wide variety of Simmental, Angus, Hereford, and Charolais bulls on offer. The cattle markets continue to be very robust, and it was great to see some really impressive herd sire prospects.
With the multi-breed component now firmly embedded in the Red Deer County Bull Sale, it was the Red Simmentals turn to lead things off. Our good friends at Red Top, Ben & Kassandra Farrant brought a really impressive string to town and their lead bulls started off the day to rousing success. When it was time to present the Flecks, one of our bulls, Lot 68: APLX Payday 20M made sure that everyone was paying attention. This dark red, heavily pigmented, homo polled rascal also happened to be our pen heavyweight – not something you usually see in a heifer bull prospect! Payday’s arrival in the ring led to some very spirited bidding from notable purebred programs from across North America. When the gavel fell, Payday sold for an incredible $38,000 to Jeff Sorenson of Garretson, South Dakota. About a month prior to the sale, Jeff came up to walk through our bull pen and Payday quickly caught his eye. We are pretty excited to have our bull join his elite bull battery south of the border.
For the balance of the APLX string, we had a very solid day, with all of our bulls on offer finding great homes. Emilee Oro / Skylark Cattle Company, Clive (Slash), Valley’s Edge Farm, Eckville (Briggs) and Layden Land & Livestock, Innisfail (Jasper) were all repeat customers of Applecross Genetics, while Rich Simmentals, Calmar (Bono), Moonlite Farm, Fairview (Touchdown) and Keith Pengelly, Caroline (Top Gun) all acquired their first bull from us. It is always a treat to have new customers alongside repeat buyers continue to support our program. In all, it was a great day to watch our bulls sell!
Overall 105 bulls sold for a very impressive $9,533 average – a $1,000,000+ sale! One of the other things we noticed going over the sales report was the that top 5 bulls sold represented 5 different segments of the sale – a Fleck, Charolais, Red Angus, Red Simmental and Hereford were the top five sellers. Talk about a well balanced multi-breed bull sale!
We would be remiss not to recognize Jay Good, Cody Copeland, Darren Paget, Glen Norton and the Transcon team for doing a tremendous job working the phones and managing the sale. I can’t imagine the life those 4 gents (and the auctioneers, and their office team) lead for the crazy two months that is bull sale season – travelling across the prairie provinces with often only a day between sales. Taking calls. Making calls. Offering advice. Dealing with bidders. And buyers. And sellers. It is certainly an occupation built only for some! We really appreciate the work they all put in for us on behalf of Applecross Cattle.
Some additional thoughts on Red Deer 2025 and this years’ bull sale season:
- 2025 was the 2nd time we have ever had the overall high seller at a bull sale. The first was back in 2013 when APLX Axel 5Z was selected by MI Simmentals; Mike Imler for $11,200. Twelve years later, Axel is probably most well know for being the sire of MI Ms Dallas (dam of NAC Battle Cry 4F). With twelve years between topping sales, it is certainly an honour we don’t take lightly!
- We have only ever topped a heifer sale once. That was Fleckvieh Equation 2019 when Applecross Penny 8F was selected by Virginia Ranch for $14,500. Along with the bulk of the Viriginia Ranch cow herd, Penny now walks at Skywest and is fresh off producing a $20,000 bred heifer of her own in ‘Virginia Glamor Gal’ who sold at Western Harvest 2024.
- It is always rather cool, humbling and flattering when a fellow purebred breeder decides to add our genetics to their herd. High sellers are great – but we also love to see all our genetics find awesome new homes.
- For the 4th year in a row, a homozygous polled bull has been our high seller. Similar to when we started selling hetero polled cattle, there is currently a robust demand for homozygous bulls. At the same token, we feel they have to be quality animals to sell well. Customers have options – and there are many traits to be reviewed when selecting a bull – so just because a bull is polled or homozygous, doesn’t mean the sale price is automatically higher.
- I do find it somewhat surprising, but we still hear/see people comment that polled cattle are still somehow ‘deficient’ compared to their horned counterparts.
- My short answer to these comments would be as follows: one of the great things about the purebred cattle business is that every breeder is free to follow their own ideas on breed improvement. If you don’t like polled cattle. Perfectly Fine. Breed horned. Nothing is stopping you.
- My longer answer is that people who suggest such must have a different perspective on where they feel the market for cattle genetics is headed. We see the market for polled cattle continuing to increase, and have been more than adequately compensated for our investment and development of polled cattle. Everyone can’t be the same – and life would be pretty boring if we all were! But I would suggest that the dramatic rise in the number and quality of polled genetics would suggest that the polled trait is here to stay.
- This concept can be extrapolated beyond polled. It doesn’t matter if it is red, black, 100% fleck, full fleck, high percentage fleck, horned, polled, goggled, or traditional painted up Simmental. We have an incredibly diverse breed with quality across every segment! Breed the cattle you enjoy, have a focus and become good at it! The market rewards quality, useful cattle, so follow your own vision (while also ensuring you can make a buck). That is the fun of being a purebred cattle breeder!
- One of the great side effects of all the interest in polled, is that there are more options to choose from! Our own search for genetics led us to Quebec and FSMB Millenium 13M to add as our new walking heifer bull. With a pedigree that reads: Gold Trigger x Magnum x Dirty Harry, his genetics aren’t necessarily new, but pack a certain consistency that should dovetail well in our heifer pen. With pretty cool pigmentation and quiet as a kitten, we look forward to his impact on our program as we move forward.
- One thing I have noticed about people during my off farm career that definitely applies to cattle breeders: Don’t just listen to what people say. See how they act as well. In the context of cattle, this translates into watching what breeders are buying and not just what they are selling. A purebred breeder has to market and promote what they have on hand (and thus that is what they will focus on talking about), but actions on what genetics are being added to a herd tends to reveal more about their longer term direction. It takes a long time to incorporate new genetics into a herd. A bull bought in 2025 will have their first calves on the ground in 2026, with the first sons on offer selling in 2027 – and the first daughters won’t calve until 2028. And that is the earliest new genetics make their way through a program! So it takes time for a new bull to make an impact – and prove themselves. If you admire a program and want to ‘follow’ it, keep a closer eye on their buying decisions vs what they may have on offer.
- Closer to home, we continue to make changes and invest in our operation.
- We spent considerable time and energy making improvements and revamping our bull development facility in 2024 with more tweaks planned for 2025.
- We have talked openly about our struggles with semen testing our yearling bulls in the past, and while our reno’s appear to have helped in that regard, we still had a few younger bulls that didn’t pass their tests in time.
- While we do agree with our vet that we ask a tremendous amount of a yearling Simmental bull – that needs to test and measure up at 12 months of age – we do compare to our peers who seem to have more luck. So there are more changes we can make, and hopefully we can keep increasing the odds of a successful test.
- (If I can get my thoughts together, I hope to do a deeper dive into the world of bull development and semen testing in a future blog post).
- The importance of the bull pen will certainly ring true for 2026, as we have an absolutely massive bull calf crop coming up. We ran 2:1 bulls this year, and we look forward to making some hard decisions at weaning time. Our bull calf crop is dominated by sons of our ‘Journey’ and ‘Tombstone’ walking bulls, so we expect a very consistent bull string for 2026.
- We are also keeping an eye on our bred heifer pen. With ‘Shades of Fall’ being a couple months earlier than December’s Equation, the selection process also starts earlier. We tentatively have 8 heifers that we are considering, but there are some milestones they still need to achieve. Every animal we sell carries our prefix, so we need to be happy with every single one of them!
For fifteen years now, it has been great to be part of the Red Deer County Bull Sale. Public auction is a great forum to get feedback on the program we are building at Applecross. We strive to produce top quality cattle, and every year provides the opportunity for feedback and ideas on what we could do differently. Some years we have the euphoria of a super high seller – other years, we don’t – but not a year goes by that we don’t learn how to do things a little better for next year. It is simply so important to continue to receive tips and advice on how to make improvements to our program.
With the bull sale now in the rear-view mirror, and breeding season underway, the breeding groups have finally been decided for the year as the excitement to incorporate new genetics competes with genetic combinations that have worked so well in the past. We look forward to the challenge of developing more, different and better genetics for future years.
Until Next Time,
Dennis
Applecross Cattle 