At their inaugural Wagyu bull sale, the Hornery family’s Bar H operation at Comet in Central Queensland offered and sold 65 bulls for an average of $11,046 and a top price of $22,500.
Bar H utilised the simultaneous Helmsman style AuctionsPlus system with all lots available for bidding at the same time.
This sale has been one of a very few opportunities where Wagyu bull buyers could bid on big lines of single vendor bulls. The average has been claimed as a record for the breed and a record for this type of AuctionsPlus sale.
Also evident was how the bidding tracked the Wagyu Fullblood Terminal Index. The higher the FTI, the greater the demand and the higher the price.
Bar H had an inspection day on October 7 but the October 21 sale was online only; no auctioneer, no live gallery of spectators, no cattle to draft and sort out, no sale barn to fit out, no expensive catalogue to print and less risk of injury to people and cattle.
But there were 114 bidders and 86 ‘view only’ guests glued to their screens while the online catalogue drew just under 3000 hits.
Frenetic unrelenting bidding did not abate for two hours. A typical AuctionsPlus simultaneous sale usually exhausts bidders in one hour. A traditional auction of 120 lots can take up to three hours.
Landmark’s Bryton Virgo said reasonable reserves meant all but a handful of live lots were on the market in the first 20 minutes and this encouraged bidders who realised they were playing for keeps.
“The AuctionsPlus system and Wagyu are a good fit and the sale results proved that”. he said.
“A lot of cattle went to central and northern New South Wales and a scattering to Central Queensland and the Darling Downs”.
A Victorian bidder landed three heifers which overall averaged $6143 for 21 unjoined yearlings and seven PTIC two year olds.
Buyers showed a preference for two year old bulls with 30 averaging $13,016 while their 32 yearling siblings averaged $9234.