Just my questions and thoughts.

The market is currently flooded........people can't sell their semen and are trying what ever they can to get rid of it..........can only sell it for what people are willing to pay for it........the semen market is nothing like it used to be and never will get back to what it was......I don't think.......but it should rebound some.........

I think the semen market will change someday ....people are going to Really have to consider drawing a buck with all the competion and flooded market, its not like you can just draw every buck on you farm that hits 250" and expect it to sell, its too risky. I personally have not ever drawn a buck on my farm because I frankly don't have one nice enough to draw yet, based off what others are selling for dirt cheap.

We draw very few bucks and mostly for insurance - in case he dies. We never sell our semen on the auction sites and I don't think we ever will. We don't even sell it at auctions. If you buy semen from us you can be assured it won't show up somewhere for next to nothing. Maybe we don't sell as much as some but that's OK.

We agree and that is why we don't sell it off the farm for one price and then put it on an auction for whatever. It is true that too much semen is out there - people were just drawing every breeder buck. We have semen from Ballistic, our buck that scored 561, and semen from Jon E. Max, our pied buck that scored 264, which is one of the highest scoring pieds out there. We will discount prices for multiple straw purchases, but we decided a long time ago that we weren't giving away our genetics.



If people are selling straws at ridiculously low prices they probably aren't even covering the cost of the semen draw, and you are right, they are devaluing their genetics.

Semen prices will most likely continue to decline in response to supply and demand. The past high prices reflected the success achieved by many breeding programs through out North America and Canada.The bubble that was experienced in the breeding end was a short-lived scenario that has corrected itself ( except for a few elite breeders) . The engine that drives the whitetail industry is stocker bucks. It is not economically feasiable to realize a profit when selling stocker bucks when you pay high prices for semen. The breeding market can be likened to a pyramid scheme that makes profitability the function of timing, ( if you were/are in the business at the early stages in your geographical areana then you could thrive and make a profit). If you got into the breeder market late in the game, your attempt to be profitable will be more difficult.Like or not, those that keep their overhead cost down and get a reasonable price for their stocker bucks will have an opportunity to realize the dream will all aspire to, raise whitetail deer and actually make money doing it! Sometimes the truth isn't very pretty, but it is no less the truth. After a good friend of mine proudly showed me his (4) semen tanks full of whitetail deer semen he asked me what I thought, I shook may head and stated " they are all worthless unless you can turn them into cash, and that he needed to have a "sidewalk sale", in fact, I have never seen a casket with room for a semen tank

Pdaddy, You pretty well summed it up! You put into words what ALOT of folks talk about all the time!

Most of the stuff that is cheap has nice pedigrees and big horns but, they have not proven themselves yet. If they really produce the price will go up.



Big bucks that are bred right and produce still bring in big money, don't kid yourself.



Many big bucks don't have a really good pedigree, they have an ok pedigree with a "name" or two thrown in there. You need to look at more than a couple of generations back in their line to see how they are really bred.

gzilla, I see your are from Texas, in my post I addressed geographical regions and that some differ from the national norm. Surely, Texas demographics are unique and in some cases totally independent from what is happening around the rest of the whitetail nation because of factors such as high volume preserve hunting, corporate hunts and restrictions on importation of whitetails in Texas. While generalizations can be made , i hesitate to draw any conclusions from your post because of your differing demographical situation when compared to the rest of the country ( except Alabama). Justifying high prices for semen has more to do with marketing strategies and less to do with production and pedigree in the vast majority of offerings. In reality, because of the expertise of various marketers in the whitetail business lots of breeders are in a no win situation and are having to face the reality of their initail overspending. All deer farmers must constantly be reminded the first rule of whitetail deerfarming " Let the buyer beware!"

This situation begs the question, whose responsibility is it when the marketers are successful in convincing a buyer to overpay for an animal or for semen? The follow up question is " Where does this cylce stop" . The cessation of this cycle will be stopped by the preserve owners, they will deternine the end product price, whether the producers make a profit or not is not the responsibility or moral obligation of the preserve owner. Ultimately each individual will be rewarded or not- rewarded for his decisions.

Why would I want to pay high dollar for semen, there are plenty of good straw's out there that can be bought worth the money. If I bought a 4k straw and used it I would never come out in the green on it. I would still have fawn's that I cant sell for enough money to cover the straw. Of all the animal's I have ever raised whitetail is the only one that I have ever had that I am not even sure if they will ever bring enough back to even cover the feed bill. I dont think the price is so low now, it was just so over priced before and a lot of it still is.

Pdaddy is correct. I have stopped counting the times that people have paid beyond top dollar for semen at auctions, come back 2 years later and not be able to get anywhere near the price of the semen for the fawns produced by that semen. The problem is compounded when you see different sellers getting less than half the price that others are getting for very similar genetics. Twice now, I have gone to the Top 30 with no intention to buy, but come home with great genetics from some "lesser" deer farms from around the country, because the bids were so much lower than similar genetics from some of the top names. Not criticizing the top names, they worked hard to get where they are, but paying close attention to EVERY lot in the sales can certainly pay off.

Like it or not. Alot has to do with the names. I think its great that we can get 300 and 400in genitics for next to nothing. The smart little farmer. 1. Learns how to ai your own deer. 2. Think stocker market only. 3. Buy every straw of semen from great genitics at cheap prices you can get your hands on and use it. Steve is right. Most are not going to get what the doe fawns are worth from high dollar semen so why not use a great son from one of those high dollar bucks and make stockers. It works!!!

Respectfully speaking, the industry is changing and progressing to new and more innovative ways to conduct business. When I got into the business in 2004, we thought that a good way to promote our breeder buck semen sales was to guarantee conception from each straw we sold. Buyers were pleased and shocked when we told them of our offering. Now, it seems that multiple farms are guaranteeing conception. We also negotiated purchases of breeder bucks on a sliding price scale. We gave 50 % down and 50% at the completion of the breeding season. If the breeder buck did not make it thru the breeder season then we did not owe the final 50%. We stayed away from the high end animals and also stayed away from sellers who would not share the risk of the purchase with us. We felt the old axiom of " We will make it right" was just not as good as having everything spelled out in writing upfront. Many successful deer farmers have told us that they had never done business this way, but were anxious to move their deer and semen therfore the deal got done. Since we guarantee conception on our semen we will not buy semen from anyone who will not do the same. We will not pay more than $1000 per straw ( with the guarantee) and we split all straws cervically into 2 does. Hence we are guarnateed one live fawn from the splitting of the straw in the two (2) does; as is every deerfarmer who buys a straw from our farm. We also limit our purchases of open does to $1000 or less and have purchased excellent bloodlines with this stategy, Maxbo, Reno, Rolex, just to name a few!

The reason that I posted this farm stategy is because of my previous post . I purposely wanted to share our business stategy with those who were interested and trying to balance their passion for raising whitetails and making a few dollars. We have and continue to focus on raising in-demand stocker bucks that we can sell and maintain our profit projections.

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Whitetail Sanctuary said:

Pdaddy, You pretty well summed it up! You put into words what ALOT of folks talk about all the time!

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Wayne I have to agree with you, pdaddy has it the nail on the head. And now he's done it Twice!! With his second post.

We have found that by trading straws we are able to get different genetics and help get our buck's name out there. A lot of farmers aren't willing to buy from people they don't know, but will trade straws.

The thing that is still confusing to me is when I look through auction books the deer that bring the most are the ones that someone spent money on not cheap seamen.



Very,Very true but if you look close you will see some of the same breeding from different farms that brought a whole lot difference in prices!!! Gotta take the good with the bad sometime's!! Things will come around in time!!!

Darin, We have all been confused by the deer business and some of us still are ..................But in time you may find the question about the price difference in a particular straw of semen and a particular animal in an auction often have the same answer!

If I buy doe A at auction from a well known farm for 5k the second I buy her the dollar value that I can sell her for will drop at least half but I bet a lot more than that, the fawn's she will have on my farm will be worth 1/3 (if I am lucky) of what the original farm could have sold them for if they had kept that doe. So if I bought that doe to sell fawn's I will go broke fast.I will still buy a few doe's like that, I will not make a habit of it. And if I buy a doe that is not dna'ed I am just plain stupid, even though the fawn's I have sold have been cheap every one want's dna done on them so the next time I have my doe's down I will draw blood on all that are not dna'ed yet. But I know how important it is to start with good stock no mater what animal type you raise it's hard to get anything good from junk. I will buy that good doe to raise my replacement stock from, if I get a few good year's from her then have to sell her and take a loss, so be it. I just hope in the long run her female offspring and semen from some good buck's will make it all worth while. I think buying fawn's is not the smartest move you can make, one year later and she is just at the age to breed for the first time. Two years later you will have your first fawn or fawn's from her. Buy the doe and you will have 4 fawn's before you ever get the first from the fawn. But I still buy a fawn or two even though I do think it is a bad move for me. Semen, I can only split a straw one time and I am not going to pay the extra for lai when I cant sell doe fawn's for decent money. So I have to look for something I think is good at a fair price. As soon as I get a buck that I think is good enough to use I may just live cover everything unless I am wanting to replace a few doe's. With feed price's I think it is tough to make any profit at all unless you are feeding mostly buck's that will sell, I dont think there is a dime to be made feeding doe fawn's for the average farm. To be honest before I sell a good fawn for nothing, I will put it in the freezer when it get's big enough before I give it away. I did sell one doe fawn this year, the straw she came from produced 3 doe fawn's 0 buck fawn's. I would have to sell all 3 to even cover the price of the straw without adding in the 400.00+ in feed the doe ate during the year.