Highland County Stockyard Reopening
The stockyard in Monterey will soon be open again and will be holding sales on a regular basis. It’s now Monterey Stockyard, LLC and Barry Wilkins, Jr. is the manager.
“My father and I bought a piece of mountain land down the road over there, and I’ve been in the livestock business for 22 years, and I was driving up and down by the sale barn and I wanted to bring it back to help the community out to have a place that they didn’t have to haul their cattle clear across the mountain and go way out of their way to market their livestock,” says Wilkins. “I just wanted to see that sale barn be brought back to life to help the community.”
The first sale will be held March 3. Sales will be held every other Wednesday, beginning on the first Wednesday of each month. Livestock receiving is from 6 am until 2 pm on sale days and the sales start at 2.
“I just really hope that the community can come together and can come and support it,” says Wilkins. “We’ve got a lot of cattle lined up already, some feeder cattle, got some lambs and some sheep coming lined up for March 3rd. We’re going to receive all types of livestock – sheep, lambs, hogs, goats, any type of feeder cattle from a baby calf to a finished steer. We’re able to market any animal you have.”
Wilkins’ will be running the stockyard with his business partner James Housden and long-time employee Mike Allen.
“We run a livestock buying station over here in Dayton now and I attend a lot of sales during the week,” says Wilkins. “We are able to market and place a lot of cattle and have a lot of other buyers that will come to our sales. We’ll be able to place and market about anything that comes in there.”
Renovations have been underway at the stockyard to prepare for reopening.
“We tore out both old scales that was there,” says Wilkins. “We are putting in brand new digital scales. Repairing all pens. Redoing the kitchen, we are redoing all of the sale barn rings. We are adding heat to the sale barn rings. Doing a lot of repairs getting things to be functionable and easier to use to operate.”
If there is enough interest and enough livestock, Wilkins would like to eventually hold sales every Wednesday. Special graded feeder cattle sales are planned on various dates.
“Highland-Bath County Feeder Association and the Virginia Cattlemen’s Association has come on board with us,” says Wilkins. “And our first state graded sale is in the works, but really hoping to kick that off on March 17th with our second sale being a graded sale for feeder cattle.”
For more information visit Monterey Stockyard on Facebook or call 540-607-6032.
Story By
