I came
I saw
I left.
This used to be a really good sale where people brought their best animals for the show on Friday and sold them on the Saturday. I used to take the day of work on Friday so I could get them in the show, and I have in the past won best of breed for poultry and sheep.
Now however, with some notable exceptions, it seems to be a place where people get rid of their rubbish.
Today there were 3 pedigree white heifers, 18 months old, and they looked like they'd been wading waist deep in mud. They were also a lot thinner than you would expect from a grazing season where the grass has never stopped growing. I cannot understand why people bother to breed and register pedigree stock and then cannot be bothered to even wash them or present them in some sort of way that shows the breed off to its best.
There were highland cattle, again pedigree registered, but very mediocre for their age which fetched about 2 thirds of what I get for my unregistered but well grown and shaped ones of the same age.
The trouble is that the prices that the poor quality stock fetch are then publicised. And people then think that as this is a specialist sale, then that is all that these minority breeds are worth.
(That is not to say that everything was poor quality. There were still some very nice animals and birds, but these are becoming more and more in the minority.)