Old Missoula

Livestock Auction Co. Gets Beef to Market

The Missoula Livestock Auction Co., which started here in 1940, provides an important cog in one of western Montana’s biggest industries – livestock.

Although the company’s annual sales at the start amounted to about 4,000 head and a volume under $1,000,000, the comparative figures had grown to 85,000 head of cattle, sheep, hogs and horses returning nearly $10,000,000 to the sellers by 1955.

The figures for 1959 were 67,629 head and $7,719,440.19.

The big yard west of the city is leased by the company from the Northern Pacific Railway Co. It contains 180 pens and represents an investment by the two companies of about $400,000.

The pens, auction ring building, a big water tank and some other facilities were constructed by the NP, while the company built the big show barn for cattle shows and other buildings.

Howard Raser, president of the Missoula Livestock Auction Co., has been an auctioneer for 39 years.

Raser, president of the National Livestock Marketing Association in 1952, was reared on a farm near Grand Island, Neb., where the first livestock auction was started in 1917. He became an auctioneer in 1921 and a proprietor for the first time in 1928.

Following his arrival in Montana in 1939 he worked as an auctioneer both here and at Bozeman. Soon he was operating auction markets in both places, but sold out at Bozeman to concentrate his interests here. He has had several partners but now is principal owner of the company.

Other officers of the company are his son, Willis Raser, vice president, and Ruth Johnson secretary-treasurer. Other auctioneers of the firm are Willis Raser and John Ray Jr.

The Montana Livestock Brand Department checks each animal as it goes down the chute after being unloaded on sale days. Later in the pens, veterinarians of the Montana Livestock Sanitary
Board inspect all stock for disease. Federal inspectors check conditions of the yard and see that federal laws governing cattle auctions are not violated.

About 40 herders keep the bulls, cows, sheep, swine and horses under control in the pens until it is their turn to come up for auction. In the auction ring the object of the auctioneer is to get the highest price he can for each animal.

Although to the average untrained ear the auctioneer’s sales pitch is often unintelligible, he is merely stating what the merchandise consists of and how much is being asked for it.

As he gets bids through various signals from the bidders, he keeps shifting to a higher price, keeping up a repetitive chatter until he feels he has gotten the highest price he can get. Then he stops talking, the stock concerned is driven out of the ring and the next unit is brought in for bidding.

Buyers from large packing houses purchase about half the livestock auctioned, the rest going to ranchers who need additional stock and to feeders, those who fatten cattle to be marketed later.

Advantage to Sellers

Selling the stock here, ranchers of this area save the money it would take to send it to livestock centers and they also save what they would lose if their stock were not in demand at the particular time it arrived at the market.

With all the big companies regularly sending buyers to Missoula, sellers can get the best prices without the cost of long shipments. And the buyers profit too, because they can send the livestock to the centers where they are needed the most.

Most of the cattle go by train from here to packing plants and to feed lots throughout the Midwest and West.