Lewiston

This is going to be a rant, as I'm thoroughly pissed...

A word of advice to sheep breeders: don't take your lambs to the auction yards. THE PRICES TOTALLY SUCK BIG TIME!!!!! Take your chances with private sales instead.

I just took my second load of young lambs up to the Lewiston livestock auction, and it will be the last time that I ever do so again. Their commission fees are totally ridiculous, and they only have a handful of bidders that even bother to show up to bid on anything. It's not even remotely worth the effort to drive up there. Talk about pathetic!

The first time that I went I took a load of yearling prime butcher wethers up in 2011 to run through the Lewiston sale. The prices were "supposedly" high at that time, but I only managed to get half of what they were worth - (and belive me, my regular private sale asking prices were NOT very high at all!) I thought that maybe I would get a better price this year for yearling breeding ewe lambs instead - maybe the bidders would like them more? WRONG!!!! They went for even less than what the wethers did! Not even a QUARTER of what they were worth!!!!!!! Argh. I'm so totally disgusted at the whole thing right now.

(And don't even get me started on the auction yards down here around our area - they're even worse! I only went to Lewiston because it was rumored to have better prices than LaGrande or Hermiston. Pffff... right!)

Lesson learned. I won't take my lambs to auctions ever again. I'd rather eat all of the extra ones instead.... (which is most likely what will happen from now on.)