From our side of the fence

Todd Meech

Nimrod, Minnesota

Wadena County

700 cows

How many auctions do you attend in a year? I attend 60-65 livestock auctions a year. About half of those are online and half are in person in Perham, Long Prairie and Albany. I enjoy both the online and in-person auctions.

What pre-evaluation do you do before an auction? I always look at the animals ahead of time. I do my homework and check the pens before I bid, looking at udders, feet and legs.

What bidding rules/strategies do you abide by during an auction? Not really; I try to keep an open mind.

Tell us about your best auction purchase. My best deal was a set of trucks I bought at an online auction about five years ago. We got five trucks, International and Peterbuilts, and we turned them into silage trucks. I got such a good deal that I feel like it was a steal. They were worth about $20,000-$30,000, and I got them for $7,500-$10,000 apiece. I couldn’t believe that I got them for so cheap.

Besides bidding, what do you enjoy about farm auctions? I go to relax and visit with other people who are there. We talk about items at the auction, what the markets are doing, other auctions we have been to and other farming-related topics. I always get a meal when I’m at Perham. I like to stay involved the whole time I am there. I’ve been going to auctions for 43 years. I’ve been going for so many years that I know when their auction times are; most of the auctioneers will call me and ask if I’m coming.

What is the craziest bid you have seen at an auction? Seeing baby calves bring $2,175 at Long Prairie. Those were black calves, but the Holsteins brought $1,600. I never thought I would see that happen. Back in 2019, we were giving calves away.

Tell us about your family and farm. I farm with my wife, Patty, and four of our six adult children — Nolan, Neil, Grace (Malone) and Hank. Together, we milk 700 cows and farm 1,400 acres. We milk with 11 robots and use our double-12 parallel parlor to milk the fresh cows for the first 10 days and any cows with teats that don’t align with the robots. I’ve been milking cows for 43 years, and Patty and I have been together for 37 years. I started with 32 cows, and we are now up to 700.

Tony Bauer

Chatfield,

Minnesota

Fillmore County

20 cows

How many auctions do you attend in a year? I attend 2-3 auctions every year. I always attend the Minnesota Brown Swiss State Sale.

What pre-evaluation do you do before an auction? I mainly go to cattle auctions. I always look through CowBuyer.com to see if it is worth my time to attend.

What bidding rules/strategies do you abide by during an auction? I don’t have any strategies when it comes to bidding. Sometimes I wait for the auctioneer to lower the price and wait for another bidder to start the bidding. Most of the time, if I see something I want, I bid on it until it gets past the price point I set.

Tell us about your best auction purchase. We bought my daughter, Bethany, a Brown Swiss calf, Dolly, when she was 9 years old for $800. This calf turned out to be a high- production cow. She is also the dam of our most award-winning cow, TCC Durham Dolly, who went to World Dairy Expo in 2017 and won her class of senior 2-year-olds and was intermediate champion of the junior show. The cow family is still strong on our farm.

Besides bidding, what do you enjoy about farm auctions? I enjoy talking to other farmers who I may only see a couple of times a year.

What is the craziest bid you have seen at an auction? Every auction always has those crazy bids that are extremely high. I don’t specifically remember one. I usually shake my head if it is on an animal I don’t agree with.

Tell us about your family and farm. My wife, Paula, along with our four kids, own and operate Topaz Cattle Company. We breed and show Brown Swiss cattle throughout the Midwest. I currently serve as the president of the Minnesota Brown Swiss Association. My wife serves on local dairy boards and works for Lely. A few years ago, we moved and sold our beef cattle and now operate our farm near my in–laws. We also raise calves, heifers and dry cows for them.

George Harth

Hinckley,
Minnesota

Pine County

90 cows

How many auctions do you attend in a year? I attend four to five auctions a year.

What pre-evaluation do you do before an auction? I always look online or order the catalog of the animals that are going to be on the sale.

What bidding rules/strategies do you abide by during an auction? I don’t really have any rules; sometimes I get what I’m bidding on, sometimes I don’t.

Tell us about your best auction purchase. I bought a Jersey one time. We show quite a bit and she was a Reserve All American. She did well at the Minnesota State Fair, too. She came from Kentucky from a herd dispersal. We are mainly Holstein but have gotten a few Jerseys and Brown Swiss to show.

Besides bidding, what do you enjoy about farm auctions? I enjoy seeing and visiting with peo-ple I know, as well as seeing daughters of bulls that we might use in our own herd. I started going to auctions with my dad when I was 5 years old.

What is the craziest bid you have seen at an auction? I saw a Holstein cow go for $1 million at a sale one time in Wisconsin. She was 8 or 9 years old and went to Canada. This was back in the 1980s.

Tell us about your family and farm. We milk 90 cows in a tiestall barn. The barn holds 50, so we have to switch a lot of cows. My brothers — Gerald, Harold and Mark — and I farm togeth-er. Harold works off the farm in addition to helping us, but the rest of us are full time on the farm. We also farm a few acres of corn and soybeans.

Chris Garris

Kooiker Dairy

Middleburg, Iowa

Sioux County

400 cows

How many auctions do you attend in a year? When it comes to auctions, I attend maybe one in-person auction each year. On the other hand, I usually browse and bid on many online auctions throughout the year. The ability to bid from home after my kids go to bed makes it all too easy to bid on things that are states away. Shipping has made it possible to purchase items and not travel to pick up smaller items. I should note I do watch farm equipment auctions, but most of my bidding is for dairy and farm collectibles.

What pre-evaluation do you do before an auction? My pre-evaluation for auctions depends on the auctioneer having plenty of quality pictures and a good description listed online. If I am looking at a piece of farm equipment and it is local, I will try to look at it in person and call the owner. Most of the time, I depend on what the auctioneer puts online; for dairy and farm collectibles, you can tell a lot from a picture.

What bidding rules/strategies do you abide by during an auction? If I attend an auction in person, I never want to be the first one to bid. Being patient sometimes gets you a better deal. I usually set a max I want to spend on an item, but I am not going to lose it for $50. When it comes to online auctions and collectibles, I always look at an auction from the last page to the first. There are usually some great items toward the end of the auction. If people lose interest on page 10 of 15, then stuff at the end goes cheap.

Tell us about your best auction purchase. There are many deals at every auction. My best farm equipment purchase was a bumper hitch livestock trailer; I bought it on a surplus trailer auction for $100. It just needed a new floor, and I use it all the time to haul everything from lawnmowers to livestock. When it comes to dairy collectibles, I have too many to list. Most of them come from consignment auctions where they fall through the cracks and do not have the correct audience watching. Most of the deals involve antique dairy equipment signs.

Besides bidding, what do you enjoy about farm auctions? Farm auctions in person are a great way to catch up with people you have not seen in a while. I have met many new friends and created relationships that last because of the shared interest in finding the next deal. Personally, I like to find deals and flip them. I love buying an item for a deal, finding a potential buyer and then making a little money but still passing a deal on. My phone is full of friends who are on the hunt for items for their collection or their equipment line. I also enjoy helping people sell items and maximizing their profits. Last year, I helped three or four neighbors and friends who were moving to town sell their whole acreage full of farm items. It is crazy how far people drive for the craziest items.

What is the craziest bid you have seen at an auction? When it comes to farm equipment, the craziest bid I have ever seen was a tractor I personally drove. In 2008, approximately, a farmer I worked for had a farm auction. He had a John Deere 4040 open station that sold for $26,000-$27,000. It had quite a few hours on it but was a peach of a tractor. Come to find out, two tractor pullers were bidding against each other to turn it into a puller. Today, it still runs down the track in the Super Farm Class out of Lyon County, Iowa. I also watch farm toy auctions, and the record I saw last year was a Tru-Scale farm set, new in the box, for $30,000-plus. For dairy collectibles, the antique sign world is crazy. Most of the signs were giveaways by dairy manufacturers and now are worth hundreds and sometimes thousands of dollars each.

Tell us about your family and farm. I help manage Kooiker Dairy Farms in Middleburg, Iowa. I work with my in-laws as we milk approximately 350 cows with 50-60 dry cows. We milk in a double-6 herringbone parlor twice a day on a dairy that was built in the 1970s. We are a 100% Holstein herd and still use bulls to do our breeding. We breed all our virgin heifers to an Angus bull. If anyone has need of good-pedigreed, sound Holstein bulls for sale, look me up. I work with my father-in-law, brother-in-law, nephews, nieces and my wife’s cousins and uncles on the dairy. We also have a large feedlot that keeps everyone busy all year round. Personally, I live on an acreage in Boyden, Iowa, with my wife and three kids and custom feed some younger cattle for neighbors. I also currently serve as president of the Western Iowa Dairy Alliance and also serve as a delegate for Dairy Farmers of America, our milk processor.

Daryl Hageman

Fitchburg, Wisconsin

Dane County

130 cows

How many auctions do you attend in a year? I attend about eight auctions a year.

What pre-evaluation do you do before an auction? For me, it’s about what I want at the time and if I’m looking for something in particular. Secondly, I’ll watch for deals. A good deal is a good deal. I collect big articulated 4-wheel drive tractors. I use them for farm work, and I currently have six. Before buying one, I look at engine hours and tires, and we usually start it up. I sometimes take it out for a drive in machinery lots. I look the tractor over mechanically to make sure it is in mechanically sound shape.

What bidding rules/strategies do you abide by during an auction? Don’t get mad at the auctioneer because they have a lot going on and don’t see you all the time. I’ve been bidding on stuff before, and they say, “Sold,” and you’re standing there like, what happened? If you get mad at them, they’re not going to look your way. You have to blow stuff off. I usually let other guys start bidding first and see where it goes. If it starts going too high for what I think it’s worth, then I won’t even get in on it. I usually set what I think it’s worth. And sometimes I get to that price and say I’ll go one more time, and I wind up getting it. I don’t always stick to my rule, but I stick close to it. It makes you wonder if everyone else thought it was worth the same.

Tell us about your best auction purchase. In August, I found a tractor with the clutch out of it. It was advertised that way, so I knew what I was looking at. You couldn’t drive it, and they didn’t even want us to start it, but that really helped bring the price down. No one could really find out how good or bad it was, which was a little bit of a gamble, but I got a good deal. You can’t buy a 3020 John Deere for $5,000, but I can go buy four times the kind of tractor horsepower-wise for the same amount of money. This tractor is usually like $15,000, but I got it for $5,500. No clutch made a big difference. Just because something is wrong with a tractor doesn’t mean I’m not going to buy it. We took a clutch up to the machinery lot and drove it home in one day.

Besides bidding, what do you enjoy about farm auctions? Getting good deals.  A lot of guys go to visit with other farmers, but I don’t know too many people there. With our farm being so close to Madison, we don’t really have any farm neighbors anymore. I think we are the last privately owned dairy in Fitchburg, and that’s sad.

What is the craziest bid you have seen at an auction? Nothing really flabbergasted me that went terribly out of line. I haven’t seen anything crazy.

Tell us about your family and farm. I farm with my brother, Clayton, at Hageman Farms. We milk in a new Universal double-8 parallel parlor that we put in last year. Cows are housed in a stanchion barn, but they’re rarely inside. In the summer, they’re outside pretty much all the time, but they go inside for the winter. We farm about 1,100 acres and sell our milk to Dairy Farmers of America.

Matt Meyer

Hillpoint, Wisconsin

Sauk County

100 cows

How many auctions do you attend in a year? Between in-person and online, I attend around 50 auctions a year.

What pre-evaluation do you do before an auction? I’ll attend an auction if I’m in the market for something specific.

What bidding rules/strategies do you abide by during an auction? In person can be much different than online. It is the same with livestock versus equipment auctions, which are different. Livestock auctions have routine buyers, and they typically set the price of what everything is going to bring. If you’re in the market for some animals, you need to set your criteria according to what they’re going to be paying. For equipment, if it’s in person, it’s very straightforward. If you want an item, bid what’s necessary. If it’s online, different companies have different formats. Some are very instant in their bids, whereas others lag. When you have the ones that bid instantly, I sometimes try to wait until the end, right before it would extend the time period, and I may place my bid right before so it doesn’t extend the time.

Tell us about your best auction purchase. It’s between two items. I purchased a New Holland rotary head for my self-propelled John Deere forage harvester, and we retrofitted that on the machine. I also bought a GMC topkick chassis truck that I’ve converted into a grain truck. Both units have been great for me, and I feel like I paid way under value for both.

Besides bidding, what do you enjoy about farm auctions? The live auctions are a chance to interact with other farmers, maybe see some people I haven’t seen for a while and talk with them. The atmosphere at an auction can be exciting, along with getting a good deal.

What is the craziest bid you have seen at an auction? One time, I watched an International 720 moldboard plow sell for $4,200 in 2017 when moldboards were kind of out of style. It was kind of crazy to me that it brought in that much money.

Tell us about your family and farm. I farm with my wife, our four kids, my brother and my father. We farm about 1,000 acres, half owned, half rented. We farm a couple hundred organic acres and do some custom farming. My brother and I also run a feed lot and have a small cow-calf herd.