Sale Barn. Ugh.

Tom and I went to the auction at the sale barn today just to see the process in case we possibly wanted to buy cows from there. We had some friends that were going and expected to meet up with them also.

I can tell you right now that it is not a place that I will be going to frequently. In fact, I'll probably never go again. We only stayed maybe ten minutes, but that was enough for us both. It's loud with the auctioneer shouting non-stop into his microphone and big steel gates opening and closing as they herd the animals one by one in and out of the small sale pen. They poke and prod and smack the animals so that they'll move quickly through the right gate.

We missed the goat sale, so we just saw some of the cows. Some of them were emaciated and a couple of them feel down. They were just poked and yanked back up and shoved through the gate.

Our friends said that last week there was a goat that was in such pitiful shape that nobody would even buy it for a dollar. They said it was dragged into the arena and dragged out by the horns. Now, I know from experience that if a goat doesn't want to go somewhere, it will flop down and you either have to wait until it decides to get up or you have to drag it. So I don't know if that was the case with that goat or if it truly was so feeble that it couldn't walk. Either way, I just can't stomache that kind of treatment.

Even Tom didn't like it. I said to him that I thought briefly of bringing Cosmos to the sale barn because we really need to sell him, but before I could even finish my sentence saying there was no way I could do that, Tom was already shaking his head, "no".