Last spring at the ranch, our neighbor Dave helped us choose a bull. One might think this would be done by visiting a corral to see which of the yearlings was the biggest, broadest, burliest, and in this age of Angus, the blackest. Instead Dave showed up in the evening with a slick-paged catalog of about 120 bulls and a ball-point pen.

Dave is known for his love of the scriptures and cattle breeding — not necessarily in that order. Each bull in the catalog had a snapshot and an array of numbers and a pedigree. Dave laid out the catalog and expounded. Traveler was a bull famous for high weaning weights. Emulator produced calves with high rates of weight gain. He told us more genealogy than we could possibly retain in a month of Sundays.

He explained the numbers: birth weight, weaning weight, yearling weight, scrotal circumference, etc. Some numbers were statistical predictions of expected progeny differences, or EPDs, and were comparisons of how the bull’s progeny were expected to perform compared to the average. I wasn’t comfortable with how to read these numbers. What does a 2.0 in birth weight, or a 17 in calving-ease-direct really mean?

He told us ranges he liked to watch. We didn’t want a bull that threw large calves that would require pulling, but sometimes that was a trade-off with large weaning weights. Mature weight of the mothers was important if we wanted to keep heifers from this bull. Maternal milk is important but is also reflected in weaning weight.

The Angus breeders have even come up with $Value indexes to simplify the process. A specific bull may have a $22 weaned weight value, but a negative (-) $23 feedlot value, a $7 quality grade value, $6 yield grade value, and finally a $36 overall beef value. This bull’s average calves should make more money for the rancher, lose money for the feedlot, and be profitable for the butcher and overall.

We decided we wanted a bull that would produce medium-size calves with high weaning weights and good meat characteristics, such as carcass weight, marbling, rib-eye area, and fat thickness. We circled a dozen bulls in the catalog. The ones with bigger pictures had larger minimum bid values, and we knew we couldn’t afford those. We found a few sleepers — ones with smaller pictures and good carcass numbers.

Then we got online and looked at a 10-second video of each one walking in a nice corral with five wooden posts and fresh straw. Dave studied their walk and the way their feet were pointed. We narrowed our field down to five and set our “bid limit” for each.

Now all we needed was to drive all day to northern Wyoming, find a motel, freeze in the auction barn, and drive home — possibly empty handed. We didn’t have the time or energy, so we got online the Saturday morning of the auction, and called one of their telephone lines. Each operator had a seat at the auction, and relayed bids to the auctioneer. On the computer screen, the bull’s sale number and bid price came up about 10 seconds after the real bidding.

We bid on a few, hoping for a steal. The sleeper bulls we had circled in the catalog had not gone unnoticed. One of them was the high priced bull at the sale for $25,000. That is not a typo. Twenty-five thousand dollars for an animal that might break his leg!

We let that one pass, but when our third circled bull came up, we bid and bid again. The price went up to our limit and we credited ourselves for choosing a bull that someone else thought was worth that much — and one that someone else may have actually seen. We bid one more time and the bull was ours. We breathed a sigh of relief. Auctions are stressful even when you are 400 miles away. We sent a check and two weeks later a cowboy driving a cattle truck brought us the bull.

Trouble was, now we didn’t have any more money for a second bull. So we decided the new bull would have to breed half the herd — with a little help from artificial insemination.

Now it is the following March and we marvel at the new shiny black calves. I wonder, what if I had a thousand cows to breed and could make $36 more profit per calf. Maybe I could have bid on the top bull.

Elizabeth B. Mitchell, along with her husband Alan, operates the Bennion Ranch at Benmore.