MERCER, Pa. — What do you want to be when you grow up? It’s a common question to ask children of all ages. Cole Byler always knew he wanted to do something with cattle, and by the time he was a teenager, he had a clear picture of what that looked like.
“I want to be a cattle dealer,” Cole told his mother one day when he was 16 or 17.
Cole had been sitting in the stands around the sale ring at Mercer Livestock Auction since he was 15. He started attending the weekly sale with a neighbor, but quickly became interested in buying and selling cattle of his own.
Later, as he worked to make that dream a reality, his aspirations grew. He wanted to own a sale barn.
Now, just a few weeks shy of turning 21 years old, both of those dreams have come true. Cole is the owner of Mercer County Stockyards LLC, which operates out of the former Mercer Livestock Auction. Cole Byler took over management of the historic sale barn off of State Route 19 in Mercer County in February.
“We got some new auctioneers and some new buyers, and we’re going to keep trying to pull in new buyers and keep getting new markets,” Cole said. “We’re going to do our best to keep the customers happy.”
Family affair
Even if you’ve never been to the auction, you likely know where it is. The sale barn is set back from the road, but the drive is marked with a massive Hereford bull statue on a pedestal.
From its inception in 1960, Mercer Livestock Auction was run by auctioneer John Reimold and, later, his son, Bob Reimold. John’s daughter, Trish Loomis, and her son, Rod, took over ownership in the 1970s and ran the business until its sale to the Miller family in 2022.
After he heard the Millers were looking to get out of the sale barn business, Cole expressed interest in taking over the facility and worked out a deal. He has a lease-to-own contract to help him get started without needing the capital to buy the facility outright.
Cole recalled the day he told his mother, Heidi Byler, about the deal.
“I said, ‘Mom, I put enough money together, I made a deal and I’m buying a sale barn,’” he said. “And she kind of looked at me funny and goes ‘What do you mean?’”
Once she overcame the initial shock, his mother asked how he planned to run the operation and offered her help.
“To be honest, I couldn’t have done it without her,” Cole said.
The previous owners stayed on for a couple of months to help get the Bylers going on the computer systems and paperwork, and they’re still learning a lot about how to run a sale barn, Heidi said. But now, they’re getting in the groove of things.
Cole has family involved at every level of the auction. It’s a true family affair. His mother runs the office along with his grandmother, Kelly Byler. His fiancée, Lily Sheatz, clerks on sale days, along with one of his aunts. Sheatz’s mother runs the scale. Cole’s the oldest of six boys, and all of his younger siblings help out in one way or another.
Cole’s newborn daughter even attended her first sale on June 9 at just 5 days old. Little Kelly Byler, named after her great-grandmother, slept through goats and sheep being sold, lying on her mother’s lap. “I was pretty tickled with that,” he said.
Blessed
Cole grew up around beef cattle at his family’s farm in Mercer. He’s always had a way with cattle, Heidi said.
“I think he’s just had a gift from God from the beginning,” she said. “I have a picture from when he was probably 2. He had this little lawn chair and he used to take it and put it along the fence, and he’d sit there for hours along the fence and just watch the cows.”
Cole, who was homeschooled along with his five younger brothers, was able to turn this interest in cattle into credits for school. He got credits in animal science and cattle dealing for his work in buying and selling livestock as a teen.
Once he graduated high school, he got into cattle dealing full-time. He’s on the road at auctions almost every day of the week. The connections Cole has made buying and selling cattle in the Midwest and in Texas have helped him bring in new and bigger buyers to Mercer County Stockyards. His earnestness has also brought back old buyers and sellers who had moved away from the sale.
“We went from 50 to 75 head when we first took over to having 420 head at the sale on June 9,” Cole said.
While the growth is obviously due to Cole’s work ethic and the support of his family, he also gives credit to a higher power. “God just kind of blessed me. We’ve been rolling right along here,” he said.
Auctions at Mercer County Stockyards are every Tuesday, starting at 10:30 a.m. For more information, visit the Mercer County Stockyards LLC on Facebook or call 724-372-9315.
