I went to my first Livestock sale two weeks ago. I haven’t been to one in the US so this was a completely new experience for me. I have been to three so far.
Palgrove Scone Bull Sale
This sale was just a day trip so we left in the morning drove about 3 hours to Scone and stayed there for about 3-4 hours then drove back to Richmond. I was really nervous and didn’t know what to expect (even though I frantically emailed a few professors and fellow ag comm. students from back home for advice … THANKS GUYS =D you all really did help )
I went with Carla who is the livestock journalist for The Land. She has been to Canada and Colorado for a few shows and sales so it was great to be able to ask her about the differences between the different countries.
When we first arrived we walked around to look at the different bulls that were for sale. It was very smelly but you kind of get used to it after a while… until the wind blows in the wrong direction. This was a smaller sale then the next one I was going to. This sale had only about 50 bull for sale and they brought out two at a time.
We sat down in the front row of the ring, it wasn’t set up where we could walk around so we stayed in our seats (plus I was too nervous to move). I took a lot of video and a few pictures but because this wasn’t a show the bulls weren’t very groomed or clean. These bulls weren’t the prettiest bulls to look at for someone like me who wasn’t able to tell the difference between them.
The auction part was really exciting. I still don’t understand why auctioneers have to talk so fast. The auctioneers were funny though. If two people were bidding back and fourth and one took longer to bid the auctioneer would start calling him or her out. The auctioneers were really good and the sale went extremely well. The highest price bull was about $10,000 and the sale average was around $6,500.
After the sale we spoke to a few people and took pictures of the high price bull then took some social pictures. THIS IS WHERE IT GETS INTERSTING.
Carla took the pictures and I was in charge of getting names. Well, just like the US where people have different accents depending on if you live in the south, east coast, Midwest, the city, the country etc… Australia is the same. Some guys are a bit harder to understand but the country guys are a lot harder to understand.
Trouble #1:
I was having a hard time with a guy that was one of the sponsors (but I didn’t know this yet). After a few tries and heaps of apologies from me he finally say "It’s that name on the big sign over there"… and sure enough his name was on the sign… the biggest sponsor sign there!
Trouble #2:
I was taking the names of two young men and young woman (probably not much older than me). The last guy I couldn’t get and he was joking around giving me a hard time and finally Carla says “Sorry she’s from the U.S, I’ll have to teach her the alphabet when we get back”. I’m glad she said this because it lighten the mood but we both noticed that not all of them were picking up my accent. Carla ended up getting his name for me.
Trouble #3:
This is the worst. Australians and Americans pronounce letters differently. Ball sounds like Bowl because they pronounce Ball like it’s spelled Baoll. (If that makes sense).
I wrote down "Bowl" for the last name and the woman was trying to correct me. She eventually was spelling it out for me but between being flustered and my dyslexia I was making a mess out of my paper. She was saying “Be-Aye-double el” but Bowl has a “double-you” so I kept getting those confused and finally Carla saved the day once again and SLOWLY spelled “B-A-L-L”… I just go “OOOHHHHH BALLL (with an American accent). I was so flustered and embarrassed.
One of the women who was in this fiasco spoke to me for a while and helped me not feel too bad, my face must have been really red.
Lesson Learned: Use being international as an excuse so they don’t just think I’m a complete idiot.
