WARNING: Beware of cowboy scammers online

Now on one hand this article is kind of funny, but on the other it’s kind of a public service announcement.

It’s a long story, and it stems purely from my tightwadedness. My tightwadedness has caused me quite a lot of frustration at times, sadly this time was no different.

This year, it’s been mostly hard times around the farm. I’m always looking for a good deal on livestock or farm equipment, hence the story of how I was almost duped by an online scammer named, “The last Hussaen Son Sr.”

So here’s how it unfolded.

We have a dairy cow that is due to calve any day. She can raise four calves at once, and she will let any calf that wants to nurse. We can’t turn her out with other cow calf pairs because every calf in the herd will nurse from her. She’s a money maker, but she kind of requires a stall and a lot and good alfalfa hay to produce that much milk. I have to buy three extra calves every year when she has her calf, she produces an insane amount of milk, four calves are easy for her.

So, I was scrolling through Facebook’s baby calf groups looking for baby calves for my very pregnant nurse cow. I found this dude in Arkansas that had dairy and beef calves for sale. I started talking to him on the messenger thing. He had jersey, Holstein, and good black calves, too. I figured I’d get a couple of the jerseys to cheapen up the cost of the good black calves.

Earlier today, I read the market report for my local salebarn. Baby calves ranged from $100-$300 dollars. I sure don’t want to pay for a $300 baby calf.

The dairy calves are usually about half the price of a beef calf. All baby calves don’t have much of an immune system, so I’m kind of picky about how they look and act when I buy them.

This guy’s calves looked good and his barn even looked good, like it was used a lot, but clean.

As far as pictures on his baby calf ad, he looked very legit.

We raise these little calves on the cow and then turn them out on grass when they get to about 300 pounds. Most years, the nurse cows raise enough extra calves we don’t have to worry about death loss from our beef cattle herd.

We’ve got two of these nurse cows and they sure help the bottom line when it comes to budgeting the projected calf crop each year.

I asked this guy how much the jersey calves cost and then how much the good blacks cost. He said a $150 for the jerseys and a $100 on the blacks. That didn’t make much sense to me, but I thought well he just misquoted them in his typing.

It was about this time I noticed his name. That’s when the red flags started going off. I searched his profile on Facebook and he didn’t have any friends and only two pictures. I was beginning to doubt this good deal I’d found. I kept plodding along hoping he’d be legit.

The tightwad in me doesn’t quit a good deal easy.

Now, his prices were in the middle of the prices of the salebarn report, but his calves would bring on the upper end of that same report. There was an awful lot of things not adding up in a hurry. I figured he might advertise good looking calves and when we met he’d show up with some scrubby looking dwarfs and try to pawn them off on me for the agreed upon price. I’ve had that happen before.

We talked back and forth and decided to meet Tuesday evening halfway between our houses. I told him I had cash.

Then it happened, he requested that I put up a down payment first.

There are several warnings about not giving out your credit card info online. That’s a big no-no to me when trading livestock.

I want to agree on the price, but I want to lay my eyes on the animal before I pay. There’s too many variables involved. I’ve never even been asked to put up a deposit.

So, I got to thinking and I started asking this dude questions any farmer out to know. I asked him how many scoops of milk replacer he put in each bottle. Then I asked him if he gave them any scour blouses.

He didn’t reply for a minute. Then he said I don’t understand.

So, I asked him if any of those calves were free martins.

Crickets, he didn’t respond.

So, I waited a bit and asked him if he had any EPDs on the calves. Again, crickets.

His only response was to ask for a down payment again.

So I did the John Wayne and blocked him on Facebook, in my mind it’s like when John Wayne hits someone in the movies and knocks them out cold. I’ll never have to deal with this scammer again, I’ve given him the John Wayne social media treatment.

However, the search for baby calves continues.