A little rain makes all the diff . . .

Driving from Denver to Cheyenne, Wyoming today for the Western Video Market sale, you could see the results of the recent week-and-a-half of rain we've had. Those normally brown rolling hills as you leave Colorado and enter Wyoming had twinges of green. Not deep, solid green by any means, but enough green for optimism.

For a cowman, they were plenty green, to mean grass for fall grazing. It showed too, at the overflowing new ballroom of Little America in Cheyenne, where cattlemen and their ladies were almost in line to buy and sell calves on the video sale. Prices were strong, and auctioneers Lex and Shawn Madden of the Torrington Livestock Auction kept the sale moving smartly.

You can never say definitively what might have been, had it not rained, but with over 40 years experience at attending such events, talking around and feeling the pulse of the crowd--the rain made a difference. The buyers were more ready to buy and pay the price to get the good ones.

This is the very essence and foundation of the cattle business. You had cow-calf producers there, selling their year's crop, and order buyers and short term graziers, buying calves for fall grazing and then into the feedlot. This was the heart of true grass country, where the very best commercial cattle come from--and you could truly say, that steak on your plate starts here.

Some 80,000 head of feeder cattle changed hands in this two-day sale, all on video and sold primarily over satellite TV, with many buyers bidding from their living room and calling in their bids on an 800 number.

Such is the state of the modern cattle industry.