Meredith McCalmon
Angus, Hereford and Simmental bulls were auctioned off on March 7 in the 48th annual Legacy Sale. The sale was held at the Stanley Stout Center and solely run by students.
Kansas State’s Purebred Beef Unit auctioned off 50 bulls in its yearly Legacy Bull and Female Sale. The event stands out as one of the only livestock sales in the country run entirely by university undergraduate students.
Angus, Hereford and Simmental bulls were auctioned off on March 7 at the Stanley Stout Center during the 48th annual Legacy Sale. In addition to the breeding, feeding and managing the livestock, the sale gives students hands-on experience in marketing, sales, photography and videography.
Christopher Mullinix, an instructor in the Department of Animal Science, serves as a co-faculty advisor for the purebred beef cattle unit and considers the sale one of the most “truly unique student opportunities that you’ll find anywhere in the country.”
“To my knowledge, we are now the only university that still hosts a production sale that is run and managed by our students, and so it’s unique in the opportunity that it gives these young people to be part of a production sale, some of which come from a family background that had given them some experience in that, others that maybe have no experience in seed, stock, production [and] sales,” Mullinix said.
The livestock sales management class taught by Mullinix and Angie Denton is the faculty connection between the students who put on the sale and the purebred unit manager, Shane Werk, who handles the day-to-day management of the cow herd.
Emerson Tarr, senior in agriculture communications, started classes at K-State last semester when he also began working with the purebred unit. He said he was involved in the process from day one.
“I was out there, quite literally every day for two months, looking at [the bulls] and checking their health and stuff like that,” Tarr said. “So yes, my role has been a lot different than most people that are in the class, but it has been a good experience just seeing both sides of it.”
While buyers may not have seen his face much on sale day, Tarr felt his work gave him the full experience of what is required to put on a sale.
“It’s not very often you get to do that … as far as growing the bulls, working the bulls, the heifers and then being able to come out here and see how we’re marketing them and talking to customers and seeing how at all aspects of the sale are run, not just behind the chute,” Tarr said.
This marked the second year that Gavin George, a junior in animal sciences, worked with the purebred unit. Throughout the semester, he also helped raise the cattle that eventually made it to this year’s sale.
“We raise fall and spring bulls every year, and we sell them as yearlings,” George said. “And there’s kids that are in the bull sale class, and they deal with making the catalog and getting stuff ready for the sale. But we managed a lot of the bulls and all the animals and stuff, and we take care of them, feed them and clip them and get them ready for the sale.”
Asa Anderson, junior in animal science, said the Legacy Sale gave students face-to-face experience not only with cattle, but also potential buyers.
“Our role as students was to truly understand the process and in-and-out of how to run a bull sale — how to communicate with customers, how to understand what they’re looking for and find that niche and how we can present the livestock that we’re marketing to fit that niche for them,” she said.
Anderson said the marketing and networking she did for the sale directly aligns with her career goals.
“The niche that I want to find within agriculture communications that I’m getting my degree in is producer communication — doing exactly what I just did with those guys on Friday, talking to them, figuring out what their needs are, not necessarily to sell a product all the time, but in this case, that’s what it was,” she said. “So this was a great opportunity for me to truly see how communication can fit into a whole regimen of a sale in and of itself and how that truly can make a customer happy.”
Tarr didn’t come from a cattle background, so the Legacy Sale was a unique experience to dive into the cattle industry and see how much the work he did impacted the final sales.
“I think the biggest thing to think about is, I don’t really know any other school that does this,” he said. “So as far as just getting more experience around the cattle industry, this is a big part of it that I feel like is very overlooked. … It was really cool to see all the work I put in, run through the sale barn and see what they bring. So for me, it’s just cool to see that I actually, I actually helped out. I can see the work that I put in, not being a cattle kid, and could see the difference I did actually make.”