Vusumuzi Dube
AS has become a tradition for me and many other livestock farmers, I attended this year’s annual bull sale for Ruvale Brahman. This is what is commonly known as the Pilossof Annual Bull Sale, taking from the family name.
This is a premier livestock production sale for pedigree Brahmans and Beefmaster. It is a very important event in the beef producers’ calendar and the attendance to this annual event speaks for itself.
As usual, after attending this function, I always pen an article to share a few lessons picked from the event and this year is no exception. One important lesson picked from this year’s edition and perhaps past ones, is that your name is everything when it comes to selling your products.
The Pilossof name is a well established and grounded name in cattle production especially in Brahman stud breeding. You will not talk about Brahman production in Zimbabwe and the Southern African region without the Pilossof name popping up. They have been in cattle production for more than 50 years and their footprint is very bold.
The same applies for even livestock producers who are not necessarily pedigree farmers. The larger number of cattle ranchers are actually commercial producers not stud breeders. Commercial producers in this context readers, refer to cattle producers who produce non pedigree or stud animals. These are animals, which are not registered with the Zimbabwe herd book. This is the bulk of farmers where you and I fall. It has been demonstrated that even in commercial herd producers, a good name matters.
A good name sells and therefore, as farmers, we need to establish good names for us to be able to sell our animals to the entire market at good price.
A good name is established through adoption of good business ethics and selling quality animals to the market. While culling is a well known management practice, as a farmer, you should not be known for selling and transferring your problems to other farmers. When we cull, let us take those animals to the abattoir for slaughter and not sell our chuff to other farmers.
This destroys your name and you will struggle to get a decent clientele for your products. Let us adopt the business culture of selling top quality from our herds not to always keep top quality for ourselves and sell third tier level quality to other farmers.
Most farmers who come to you are also trying to establish and grow, hence selling them a product, which will fail their enterprise, is at best fraudulent and at worst criminal. A good product will have a domino effect in broadcasting your product as a good investment. I bought two good heifers about four years ago, from a good farmer, Mr Dube, just 20 kilometres from Kezi.
The two heifers, which are obviously cows now, have done so well for me and one even gave me a set of twins! I am looking at going back again to him and buy five more heifers because the first buy was a good one for me.
In my files, his name now ranks among the top when I need to refer someone looking to buy heifers. I must hasten to indicate that this farmer also sells at premium price and I guess because he knows what he is selling.
Going back to the Pilossof Annual Bull Sale, one clear message coming out from the market was that there is an appetite for quality out there.
What with heifers is going for as high as $3 500 each and even non-pedigree commercial heifers of good quality went for a steep asking price of $1 600 each! Bulls hit peak at $14 000 each with the average price hovering around $8 000. Farmers are hungry for quality and they came as far afield as Harare and its environs to come and grab the quality. The appetite was also a demonstration of market starvation and we need to create more such outlets for quality animal auctions.
I have said it before on this platform that as livestock farmers, we need a production sale for commercial herds of the same gravitas as the Pilossof Annual Bull Sale. Is it not possible to have good farmers of commercial herds coming together and hold an annual sale to sell their top quality bulls and heifers from their ranches?
Mind you, commercial herds producers are the majority of livestock farmers and like pedigree farmers, they too need to have an outlet to sell their product at premium prices, otherwise at some point it will stop making sense for one to invest heavily on a pricey pedigree bull when he cannot sell its offspring at a good price, which justifies the investment. Maybe I should take the bull by its horns and organise this kind of inaugural sale to illustrate what I have in mind. Uyabonga umntaka MaKhumalo.
Mhlupheki Dube is a livestock specialist and farmer.
He writes in his own capacity. Feedback [email protected] cell 0772851275
Bongani Ndlovu