Auction Day - 3rd day - County Fair 2011

This is our last day with the lambs. We woke up very early to get to the fairgrounds to feed the lambs. The kids are nervous that no one will buy their lamb. Every year we have random people from a business in the community buy the each of the lambs at the auction. The kids just hoped that it would go well for us and their friends that worked so hard. This year our neighbors lambs were sick and they have a large vet bill to pay so we hope they break even.
Each lamb is given a number and a market value determined by their weight and placing in the market competition. We will be the 108th and 110th animal to be sold. The market value is $235 I think, so each sale the buyer only pays above the market value.
Here they are waiting to go down the shoot to the auction block! You need to look sharp and smile!

The lamb sells for about $350 if you are lucky, so the buying only pays $115 for the lamb. Seems simple right, well it does get more complicated but that is the simple version. Each child can also receive boosts on top of the auction price by multiple people they have written letters to. These sponsors can boost from $1 to $300 or more. So if you have 2 or three boosts at 10-15 dollars each you have paid for a couple bags of lamb grain you bought to feed your project. Every little bit counts. It takes 8 bags of grain at $16 each for each of our lambs this year. Uncle Lloyd and Uncle Max are always boosting the projects! Thank you!!!

Here is the auction room.

Susan's lamb, Dandy, is getting bid on. The caller can sure talk fast!

Here is Peter and his lamb Frog.

Lucy's lamb, Freckles, was a little later, 137 to go in. There were 360 animals being auctioned. Instead of doing all the lambs then all the Steers and then Hogs they mix them up and do about 20 sheep then 10 hogs then 2-3 cattle. This livens it up a bit.

We had some very nice people buy our lambs. Susan's competition in showmanship's father, Mike Nielsen purchased both Susan's and Peters lambs. The other little boy in our 4-H group's father purchased the other one from his company, Mountainview Veterinarian Clinic. They did pretty good at the auction. Most of the kids have their families companies buy them or out of this world prices. Sometimes a company will give a representative a couple thousand dollars to split between a few kids animals. However it is done it is a lot of very kind and generous people supporting the kids in the community in very expensive projects.

After the auction the 4-H kids help pass out a free lunch to all the buyers as the auction continues well past lunchtime. Local companies and the Macey's grocery store donate the food for this. This way the auction can continue without everyone disappearing because they are hungry.

We then went swimming for a couple of hours at the pool across the street. Thank you to grandma Arlene for the swim passes!

At about 8:30pm Saturday evening the kids said their good-byes after feeding their sheep for the last time. They will all be BBQ before Monday.


There was a beautiful sunset on the way home to make everyone happy. I think Peter was the only one that really had a hard time saying good-bye. He said this was his favorite lamb.


It sure was a good year at the fair! Thank you to all our boosters and supporters this year and last year! The kids really got a lot out of their projects!