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ATA
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LAFSON
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TH
A
NNUAL
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IMMENTAL
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ULL AND
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EMALE
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RODUCTION
S
ALE
Welcome to the
Bata Brothers/Olafson Brothers
Twentieth Annual Simmental Bull
And Female Production Sale
Dear Friends,
It is hard to imagine that we are hosting our twentieth annual sale. The old
saying “time flies when you’re having fun” applies to our experience. Another
old saying that comes to mind this year is “all good things must come to an
end.” Twenty years of production sales is certainly a milestone, but we made
a decision in 2015 to commence a three year plan for a complete dispersal of
our cattle herd, and this will be our final sale.
Since the dispersal process began, a lot of people have asked me if I miss
the cows. My answer is that I will miss all of our great customers even more.
It is impossible to put into words how much we appreciate the support of our
customer base over all these years.
As we prepare for this sale, the most notable issue is that the cattle market
seems to have stabilized and has actually shown a good improvement since the
October 2016 lows. I always said that the market downturn that began in 2015
was overdone because we did not suddenly add millions of head of cattle to the
national inventory. Hopefully the rebound continues. There seems to be great
optimism in the stock market, and common sense would lead one to believe
that this optimism will eventually support all segments of the economy.
The Simmental breed has been a good place to be and will continue to be in
the future. It can be argued that in the last couple of decades, the Simmental
breed has made more positive progress on the genetics of our cattle than any
other breed.
We would also like to welcome Travis and Corri Bell as guest consignors to
our sale. They purchased a large group of bred heifers from us early in 2016,
so our genetics can be found in the bulls they have consigned to the sale.
Finally, we can’t say enough about what a great and rewarding experience it has
been over the years to have the opportunity to work with the Bata families in
bringing you quality offerings of Simmental seed stock. We have never needed
to have a contract and it could not have been smoother or more enjoyable to
work with them. A sincere and heartfelt thank you to the Bata’s for their friend-
ship. And thank you for attending our sale.
Olafson Brothers
Curtis and Roger
Dear Friends,
Welcome to our 20th sale. A milestone we are proud to have achieved. As we look
back at the old sale books, we note the many changes in cattle. They are thicker and
heavier than the first ones. We have always tried to produce performance cattle for the
commercial cattle producer. The years of breeding with that goal has produced some of
the top performance cows in the breed.
With one of the wettest years on record, it has been a challenging summer and fall.
Combining was tough. It started in August and ended November 10th. The “pull-out”
tractor was always the first to the field.
The calves didn’t get weaned until November 15th because of the wet cattle lots. It
made for some “big boys” on weaning day. They continued gaining through the cold,
snowy December and January. We want to thank Brent Kuss and family for another great
set of ET calves. The 25 we brought home are some of the best!
With eight grandchildren, Grandma Patty and Pa-pa Joe are kept busy. Feeding the
cows is everyone’s favorite pastime, but only so many can fit in a tractor. Little Joseph
was sad going home after Christmas.
He was worried the cows were hungry because he didn’t help Pa-pa Joe feed them that
morning!
It is with regrets that the 20th sale will be our last sale with Olafson Brothers. It has
been great working with them. We wish them well in their new freedom, no chores!!
We congratulate them on receiving the Pioneer Award from the ND Simmental
Association! They have been “pioneers” at breeding performance Simmental cattle! We
will always remember the hard work and extra efforts they have put into making better
cattle for customers.
We welcome Travis Bell and family to our sale partnership. They hope to carry on with
the Olafson pedigrees as a foundation to their new herd.
We thank everyone for their interest.
See you at the sale!
Bata Brothers
Joe, Chris, Mark
