Tulare Sales Yard

Tulare Sales Yard sells cattle Monday through Thursday at 4013 South K Street in Tulare, with sales at noon and at 2:00 in the afternoon. Across the week the ring takes slaughter cows, feeder cattle, and dairy replacements. Tuesday is the dairy day. An agricultural trade directory adds Special Dairy Sales on the second and fourth Tuesdays of each month. Special Feeder Sales fill the first and third Wednesdays. The yard’s own site places it “in the Heart of the Central Valley” and says it serves customers from all over the state.

The Friday report

Each Friday the yard posts its market reports. The beef numbers come from its own ring, and the dairy numbers come from the Central California market. For the week ending October 2, 2026, the report counted 1,295 head sold:

• High-yielding weigh cows brought $142 to $160 a hundredweight.
• Low-yielding weigh cows brought $80 to $112.
• High-yielding bulls brought $165 to $181.
• Holstein heifers of 300 to 500 pounds ran from $240 to $350.
• Jersey heifers held near $170 to $188 at every weight.
• Number one Holstein fresh heifers sold for $2,700 to $3,400 a head.

Every steer class, Holstein and Jersey, was marked “no test,” and so were the springers.

David and Tina Macedo own and run the yard. The website names David as the resource for consignors and buyers and states its rule plainly: “Ensuring fair market price is highly important to our business.” Beneath the sale schedule it prints a motto the yard says it has operated by since 1939: “Life is not about what you gather in this world, it is what you give back to your community that will define you.” The California Department of Food and Agriculture’s sale-yard directory, dated 2019, lists Tulare Sales Yard among four sale yards in Tulare County and assigns two state livestock inspectors to its sale days.

Frank Macedo leaves the dairy

The year 1939 heads the yard’s website, beside the line “Serving Tulare County for over 87 years.” In 2023 and 2024 the Mid Valley Times and The San Joaquin Valley Sun covered Alexandra Macedo’s run for the 33rd District Assembly seat, and both reported that her family founded the yard in 1939. Her campaign biography says the yard has been in the family since that year and calls her the fourth generation to be a part of it. Alexandra Macedo partnered with her mother, Tina, in an engineering and consulting business for dairy and crop farmers.

The obituary of Frank J. Macedo gives a closer account of one generation. He was born November 19, 1935, in Tulare to Mary and Joseph Macedo. He was raised on a dairy farm west of town and became a partner there with his father and brothers. He graduated from Tulare Union High School in 1954, where he was named FFA American Farmer and served as chapter president. He met Janet Souza in high school, and they married on April 14, 1955. In 1971, the obituary says, Frank “left the family Dairy” to own and operate Tulare Sales Yard, Inc. He later went into partnership with his son David and retired in 2000. The obituary does not say how the yard came to him.

Away from the ring he golfed and played cards. “Made my day every Wednesday, Friday and Saturday when I saw Frank’s car in the parking lot at the golf course,” Stan Thompson wrote in the guest book. Frank Macedo died in the early morning hours of Friday, September 26, 2014. His family asked that remembrances go to Meals on Wheels or to Ag Round-Up for Children, in care of the sales yard on South K Street, for the Frank Macedo Memorial Scholarship.

Thirty-one auctioneers and a dairy sale

David Macedo won the World Livestock Auctioneer Championship in 2006, in the contest held that year at Escalon Livestock Market in Escalon, California. The Livestock Marketing Association first held the championship in June 1963 at the Cosmopolitan Hotel in Denver. That year 23 contestants sold the same 20 head of cattle over and over. The contest stayed in hotels until 1967, when it moved to its first member market.

In 2019 the 56th championship came to Tulare. The association announced it in February as free and open to the public, held in conjunction with its annual convention in nearby Visalia. Contestants would sell cattle to actual bidders in the seats. “You’re going to see thirty-one of the most confident men in the world at what they do be a little nervous, and that’s kind of fun,” David Macedo said ahead of the event. The interviews were set for Friday, June 7, and the auctioneering for the next morning at the yard, beginning at 8:00. The Capital Press put the Macedos’ hosting at June 6 through 8. The week also included a barbecue at the Tulare Fairgrounds.

The sale itself was the first 100 percent dairy sale in the association’s history, Western Farm Press reported. Each contestant sold at least eight drafts of livestock before five judges, scored on presentation, chant, execution of sale, and how likely the judge would be to hire him. Past champions were to sell during a Parade of Champions between the semifinal and final rounds.

Russele Sleep of Bedford, Iowa, won. “I started coming to these in 2009, two days after my daughter was born, and came and competed and had a great time,” he said. “I spend five or six days a week on the road as an auctioneer and that’s how I feed my family.” His prizes included:

• a check for $6,000
• a custom ruby and diamond champion’s ring donated by the Tulare Sales Yard
• an engraved microphone
• a Chevy Silverado to drive for a year
• a silver money clip representing the money an auctioneer struggles to put in the producers’ pocket

The Capital Press photograph of the moment shows Joyce Machado, the sales yard clerk, looking on with Jared Miller, the 2018 champion.

Chuck Bradley of Rockford, Alabama, took reserve champion, and Will Epperly of Dunlap, Iowa, placed third. “That was just plain fun,” Epperly said. “I’ve been in the finals six times and I have not had more fun selling cattle than I just did.” David Macedo described the hosts’ aim: “We just wanted to make sure contestants had a fair shake and make it more about the contestants than the Tulare Sales Yard.”

The association’s list of champions continues from there. Chuck Bradley won in 2021, Will Epperly in 2022, Jacob Massey in 2023, Wade Leist in 2024, and Dean Edge in 2025. All five had been on the roster of auctioneers who sold dairy cattle in the Tulare ring in June 2019.