Bulls of the Big Sky

As promised, some more photos and information about Bulls of the Big Sky, the bull auction we went to this past Monday.

I love this old-style sign that Billings Live Stock Commission has. You can see it from the interstate and it is fantastic.  Anyway, people in the know just refer to it as "Billings Live" for short. :)

 All the animals are held in pens behind the sale barn.  It's necessary to arrive a few hours before the start time of the sale and walk through the pens to check out the animals.  At this point, most of the bulls are yearlings-- not full grown yet-- but still big!

It's also a good idea to get them to walk around so you can see their shape better, as Jeff is doing in these two photos.

This sale featured mostly Simmental bulls, and SimAngus, which is a cross between Simmental and Angus.  There were just a few full Angus animals.

 This guy was pretty gentle and definitely curious about people.  A mild demeanor is a noted and desirable trait of the Simmental breed.

Below is a still of the sale arena.  The bulls are walked into the arena through the gate in the left side of the photo.  The auctioneer calls the sale and takes bids, and the bull is walked out the gate on the right side of the photo.  Each bull is sold in about 30 seconds.  Pretty crazy.  If you haven't already, check out the video I took of the sale in the previous post.

There were just over 200 bulls sold at Bulls of the Big Sky. The auction itself lasted about 3.5 hours.  The highest selling bull went for $11,000.  I would estimate that the average for the sale was between $3,000 and $4,000 per animal.  Pretty crazy...

These are clearly NOT bulls!
My sister-in-law made these delicious and superbly decorated cookies, which we enjoyed during our stay with her and her husband, prior to heading to Billings for the bull sale. Pretty impressive! :)