Glenview Farms calves in December and January and weans in July, when steers weigh 450 to 500 pounds. The animals spend the summer grazing Coastal bermudagrass. In fall, pastures are overseeded with rye. In spring, the Joneses sort calves into trailer-load lots by size and sex. A brochure describing them goes out to interested buyers, who submit phone bids on a specified day.
Most calves go to Midwestern feedlots.
Jones markets the top end of the heifer crop as replacements through private treaty. Cattle sold through an auction barn would suffer considerably more shrink. Okla. Hall squeezes costs at every turn, from buying somebody else's mismanaged cows to boosting his pasture's carrying capacity with grasses that can carry the load. In spring 1999 he bought 30 young cows cheap that hadn't bred back after their second calves for their owner. Hall fed them into breeding condition for much less than the money he saved because they had been open.