First of all, we figured out the base price of cattle, because we figured that we need a value that will become our basis. We came across Bluegrass Stockyard's price grid and decided that that is our base price, in which the size of the cattle is already accounted for. Then, we guessed that Baldies and Angus are premium, Off Colored is standard, and Limousin and Charolais Cross are of lower grade. Based on other grids that we came across, we assigned amounts of discounts according to each breed. Then we multiplied that according to the percentage of each breed in the lot and subtracted/added them to the base price. We also did that for their sex, because we saw that steers are worth more than heifers.
It was a great disadvantage for us that we did not have any member from farm background. Therefore, we didn't know which breed was premium or standard and we couldn't find any information on internet about that. But our guesses must have not been too far off, because we came up with very close figure to the actual price after final adjustment. However, at first, we calculated the total income from selling the whole lot, so our result was that the bigger lots get more income. Fortunately, we noticed the mistake and we fixed that during our class time. After that, we noticed that our pricing was very accurate and the order was pretty close too. I thought that this was great exercise, because it gave me a good insight on how animals are priced.
