fair animals

[cow pollinater]

It's close to fair time here and I have a severe case of cognative dissonance.
In the past I've ranted against teaching youngsters that haltered hamburger raised outside of industry norms and sold for three times what they can expect for a similar animal is a disservice to youth interested in raising livestock. I have the same feelings towards pork and lamb.
Older, softer me with two young kids(not involved in 4h/ffa but real production agriculture as I was raised) is starting to think that maybe that positive money flow is enough to keep kids interested at least enough to vote farm friendly.
I am on the fence. Most years I'll place a minimum bid so that no kid sells an animal for anything less than what the premium market price is for that animal but there are a few kids that I know of this year that deserve what the kids with connections are getting.
How do you all handle this stuff? I've got conflicting parts of my brain sending me different signals so I'm open to great ideas about the best way to help kids.

 

[dun]

Since ours is a local county fair we just give several hundred dollars to the fair board to use for trophys/ribbons and such. For an exceptional kid we'll throw some money into the added money pot for them.

 

[backhoeboogie]

How do you all handle this stuff? I've got conflicting parts of my brain sending me different signals so I'm open to great ideas about the best way to help kids.

Getting out the fish fryer and cooking a calf's feed twice a day just to level the playing field is not my idea of what it was meant to be. Lots of folks are doing it.

At this point, I am hoping my grandsons don't decide to show. If they do, it'll likely be a good lesson in ethics. They're going to have to do the work. They'll be better for it.

Hard for me to know their real competitors are the parents and hired pros.

 

[Red Bull Breeder]

A group of us got together for a few years and pooled money to at least make a decent premium for the kids with out the connections.

 

[cow pollinater]

A group of us got together for a few years and pooled money to at least make a decent premium for the kids with out the connections.

Do you try to get them up near what the connected kids are getting or just give them a premium on market price?
I know of a couple of animals where the kids have done ALL of the work start to finish. Their animals are not "winners" but these kids did good for not having a grown-up help. Part of me wants to help them to show the rich little snots and their parents a thing or two but I don't want to take away the experience of working really hard and getting less than what connected kids get as that is part of the lesson as well and will likely serve them better than getting top dollar would.

 

[Engler]

Every county fair sale that I've been to always plays the same way, Billy who has a really good lamb that he worked his tail off with and did really well with can't get a bid because mom and dad both have 9-5 W2 jobs, but Tommy who has 3 turd pigs that he fed every third day and trailed out end of the class has the banker, impement dealer, seed guy..... tripping over themselves to see who can toss the most money at him because they want dad to know how much they appreciate his business. I assume it's the same everywhere, and I'm as guilty as the next business.

As far as what can you do, if they are showing heifers can you just give them the semen to breed them and do the work for free? Do they have a place they can keep the heifers once they become cows, can you cut them a deal on that? If they have steers, barrows or weathers it gets more challenging other than flat out buying them through the auction, I try to do this as well.

I've been to enough shows and seen enough judges give the same speach that I really want to believe it for when my kids are old enough to show. It usually goes something like this "...what's important here isn't raising cattle (or sheep, or pigs, or rabbits, goats, chickens or whatever else) it's about raising kids. Something about when they were young or their kids, then I really believe that there isn't a better way for children to grow up and learn responcibility...." When you look at the demographics of the average high school even in fly over country where I am most kids are at least 2-3 generations removed from production ag. This hamburger on a string is as close as what most of them are ever going to be to the front end of the food chain, but they will be consumers their entire live. With that said, if we can give them a little better experience by rewarding them for their efforts, hopefully when they are old and cranky they still have a soft spot for the crusty, old rancher that tossed them a bone when the were 16 years old and that will give them a warm fuzzy and make them feel better about ag in general.

 

[dun]

At our fair sale bids are taken for the floor price, that is the minmum per pound the kid will get. We're a poor community so we don;t have many issues with high rollers. There is a group called friends of the fair that will bid on animals if the bidding is too low. They will buy it then floor the animal, i.e. they only have to pay the amount over the floor and the slaughterhouse that bought the floor pays the rest (the floor price). We have 4-5 slaughterhouses in the area, actually custom butchers, and they are the ones that set the floor. Usually it's a little over what the top of the market would be per pound. Not that long ago we used to have 75 or more steers at the fair, each year it's gone down a few. Thes year there was only 27.

 

[cow pollinater]

As far as what can you do, if they are showing heifers can you just give them the semen to breed them and do the work for free? Do they have a place they can keep the heifers once they become cows, can you cut them a deal on that? If they have steers, barrows or weathers it gets more challenging other than flat out buying them through the auction, I try to do this as well.

The butcher stuff is what I'm talking about. The dairy cattle always sell well because we have such a strong dairy community here. I don't worry about the heifers at all because my customers think about like I do and won't watch one sell cheap, especially when she's an animal that they can use. ;-)
As far as breeding them, I don't do that for free as they keep records and tracking expenses is a big part of that but I use bulls that have famous name recognition that will sell retail for $50 and charge them $4 for the semen and $5 to breed the cow and then hand it to the ag instructor the next time I see him. :lol: That's a realistic price that a dairymen would pay commercially so that's where I set their price so they learn realistic cost in at least one part of the experience.

 

[Red Bull Breeder]

Depends mostly the number of kids we try to help and how much money we can rake up to bid with. We just do the best we can most times it works out pretty well.