2023 Oklahoma Bison Association Annual Winter Show & Sale Recap and Award Winners

Jan 28

Happy New Year Everyone!

What a ride we had to finish off the year. We finally had our show & sale on December 16th (first in 3 years) and we feel quite confident in how everything went. We had 116 animals from 12 different consignors, and we sure had some beautiful animals there.

Before we go any further, THANK YOU to everyone who participated in bringing animals, buying animals, or by showing up and helping out. We are blown away by how many of our members were willing to help and it did not go unnoticed. Additionally, how great was it to all be together again at the Friday night dinner! The cafe knocked it out of the park with both the BBQ sandwiches and the burgers.

The 116 animals were sold to 11 buyers, 10 in-person and 1 online, for a total of $123,250. I think we can all agree that prices were not where we wanted them to be. Identifying and making adjustments accordingly to ensure top value for your bison will be our top focus for next year’s auction.

On a positive note, how did you like the new venue! We had fantastic feedback not only from members but also from the public who got to enjoy the open viewing. Being able to offer a public viewing was an added bonus with our switch to the Fairgrounds, and the turnout was great. With the setup at the fairgrounds, one of the big differences this year was that we did not run the bison through a ring. We tried this for a few reasons and though did run smoothly, we know that seeing the animals run in the ring also has several benefits.

And that brings us to our most important reason for this email - WE WANT YOUR FEEDBACK. Please send us your feedback about the show & sale: the good, the bad and the ugly! The officers will have a meeting in the near future to go over the event as well as your feedback.

Additionally, we want to add a set of board members to the OBA. Board members are a crucial addition to the officers when it comes to decision making and ensuring that our members are being taken care of. Along with your feedback reply, we want each member to please send us 3 people (nominations) that you would like to see as board members. Us officers cannot be elected as board members so don’t include us (Dusty Baker, Jessi Deardorf, Cindy Sheffield, Colby Lovelady). Just send us three other names and we’ll add them all up and pick the top 3. In the event of a tie, we’ll send a follow-up email. Please get these to us by the end of the month!

We have some other things in the works to help continue to promote our association, our industry as well as to keep us all connected. One of these is hopefully the return of an OBA summer social, so keep your eyes out for an update.

Again, we cannot thank you enough for your continued support of the OBA. We know this year brought A LOT of changes and we would not have seen as much success as we did this year if it wasn’t for each one of you. We can’t wait to see what we can build upon and how we can grow with you in 2024!