How is sale order determined at your county fair?

I am curious to see the responses to this.  Our county fair was just held and I was shocked to see the sale order not determined by quality, rather by math.  So my question: Is this normal?  Does the judge place and determine the sale order in your county?  To be clear, of course the champions were first but after that it was the class winners, then the second places and so on, from lightest to heaviest and there were some obvious inconstancies.  The fair my boys participate in is not the one my sister and I attended while in 4H and in that county the judge determined the sale order so if you were number 6 in the sale order, you had the sixth highest quality steer (at least on that day and whith that judge) and so on.  Maybe that practice is not normal and that is why I am asking.  Thanks in advance.

And they did this in every species...my youngest nephew had the class winner in the lightest class of hogs and he sold first after the champions.  There were plenty of more finished hogs that should have been in front of him.  This is another reason I am asking.  Thanks

In our county the grand champion and reserve champion beef, sheep and swine sell first.  After that it is luck of the draw.  At each weigh in the exhibitor pulls a number which determines the sale order.  Each exhibitor is only allowed to sell one animal even if they are a champion in more than one species . 

We show for sale order - after Grand and Reserve Grand, the judge places all the breed Champions, then all the reserves, then places the rest of the sale order.

At our county show, immediately following each breed we show for sale order within that breed.  Then after grand and reserve grand are chosen, they immediately bring in the backup steers to those calves in their breed sale orders, and begin showing for final sale order.  It's exactly the way it should be done, in my opinion.  Sometimes breed champions will sit on the front line for quite some time, before they're pulled.  But, if the judge feels as if the #10 cross is better than the #1 hereford, that's his choice.  Our county show is extremely competetive & we have an outstanding premium sale.  I think those 2 go hand-in-hand.  We're very fortunate to be in a community that supports our youth and ag programs.

At my county fair (just under 300 head of cattle) they have all of the division champions first, Which is the breeds and 4 cros breds first, then the reserve divisions, finally they go by ear tag which is a fairly random method. Each exhibitor can sell 2 calves so the kid draws a low number tag and a high number tag. Seems to work well for us.

Our fair does it just like yours; 1st in all weights, second in all weights, third... and they stagger species so the first placing steer lightweight, first place heavy weight, then first place light weight lamb, and so on. Of course, all of the champions sell first

Our fair is luck of the draw. Sale of campions- all champions are placed in a hat then drawn out randomly. Then same thing with rest of sale. Need a pig, draw one from pig hat same goes for sheep & cattle. That way we have a mix of all species all the way through to end of sale. Plus in regards to steers the kids that show dairy steers aren't always last.

At our fair, all the kids names are put in a hat and drawn out for sale order so it is just luck of the draw.  Grand and reserve of each species sell first, then it goes to the random drawing order.

DLZ

our grand and reserves are guarenteed to sell, then the rest of the steers go in and are placed third- last overall and the top 33% sell... we had reserve champion american (not breed, but division) and didnt make the sale this year, talk about frustrating... i think its great to do a sale order but calves that are "labeled" as champions and get buckles/plaques/banners for winning a class/breed/divsion should be guarenteed a sale hole as opposed to take a hit because of breed or color

and then all the second-last places fight it our for the remainder of sale holes

We start with rate of gain champ, then grand champ, champ premiere on hoof, res of each of those, followed by the rest selling from heaviest to lightest.

we sell champions of the 3 species that we got in the sale. then they do swine, sheep and then beef, each species is randomized somehow don't ask me how they do it but they do. the only thing that sucks for that is our sale is the night of the beef show, so the sale catalogs don't get made up till after the show, so we dont know when we sell until 30 minutes before the sale starts.

as to what goes in the sale. for sheep and hogs its of course your champion and reserves overall. then they have all the blue ribbons. then they pick em based on carcass placing. for beef its the champions overall, the beef, market heifers, dairy, and dairy beef cross, thats all we got "breed" wise, divisions are not guaranteed. then the judge picks.

kids are only allowed to sell one, but all champion overalls are eligible for sale. for each species we also only sell 70% of eligible exhibitors/animals. meaning the number of exhibitors that have all the required points, animals have to make weight and rate of gain, and if an exhibitor has 2 animals in a species they only count as one. for pigs it is close to 70% of the animals at the show are in the sale. sheep i think its actually around 60%. and beef i think its closer to 55% or less, as most of us have multiple animals. a couple years ago it was always no matter what 43 hogs, 23 sheep, and 18 steers. well kids started not showing beef and showing sheep cus we never had even 20 eligible sheep, so they were guaranteed sale. i'm glad that's been changed.

talk about frustrating. reserve champion carcass steer did not go in the sale a couple of yrs back. both the champion and reserve overall ranked in the bottom 5 for carcass. i had the reserve carcass haha, only yr i didnt make sale. idk what would y'all rather eat the purple ribbon in the show ring and pink ribbon on carcass steer or the white ribbon show ring, champion carcass, just saying.

to me some judges need to judge on carcass. not just showyness. our judge last yr did an amazing job at that. he placed those classes exactly how the carcass print out was, maybe a couple of switches that were pretty minor. so thanks to doug fisch for being and awesome judge.

jlingle said:

At our county show, immediately following each breed we show for sale order within that breed.  Then after grand and reserve grand are chosen, they immediately bring in the backup steers to those calves in their breed sale orders, and begin showing for final sale order.  It's exactly the way it should be done, in my opinion.  Sometimes breed champions will sit on the front line for quite some time, before they're pulled.  But, if the judge feels as if the #10 cross is better than the #1 hereford, that's his choice.  Our county show is extremely competetive & we have an outstanding premium sale.  I think those 2 go hand-in-hand.  We're very fortunate to be in a community that supports our youth and ag programs.

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We also show for sale order after each breed.  I don't have any problem with the way your county does it, but I will say that our system helps keep the breeds (we just show Angus, Hereford, Shorthorn and cross) competitive because people work to win those breeds in order to be early in the sale.  After Grand and Reserve, where you are in sale order has nothing to do with how much you bring anyway...

Our fair does it the same way, Grand, Reserve, Div. Champ and reserve (4H and FFA) Class winners randomly by wait and 4H and FFA. All the way down. I agree pour quality animals make it in the sale early. We only sale the Blue ribbon animals but it seams that it takes less to get a blue ribbon we had 95 steers at our Fair and I do not think any of them got a red ribbon, I find that hard to believe after watching all the classes.

Our Sale starts at 10 am they sale around 200 hogs, even at a minute a hog it runs to about 1:30 then chicken, turkey, and Rabbits (just the champions), Veal About 10 head, goats around 25 head, sheep about 120 head and then steers around 55 head, sale ends about 6 6:30 makes for a long day.

Some of the parents were complaining about the order, they want the beef to go earlier, because prices were down, I think based off of the economy it would not have mattered what order they were in, prices would have been the same.

I would like to see them try running then in shifts, 50 hogs, 3 veal, 6 goats, 30 sheep, 12 steers and then start over, might help sale more as some people do not stay all day.

Our tiny fair rotates each year.  Beef might go first, then sheep, then pigs.  Then within different animals, it goes grand, reserve and down the line from heaviest to lightest I believe.  Our fair is so tiny and our community hurting for $, usually there is very little difference in price from Grand to last place.  A dollar figure is established and it pretty much runs through the sale.

If I understand correctly, it would seem awfully time consuming to basically place every single animal...if you sold 6th, you'd be 6th best etc. Our sale is CH, RCH, class winners and then all the 2nds, 3rds etc. We class by weight and no breeds. So the classes sell lightest to heaviest. For example, in most cases that 5th place steer in the class 5 would be superior to say the second place calf in the first class but he sells with all the 5th place calves.

It doesn't take all that long to show for sale order, but we only sell 27 steers, so after Grand and Reserve, the judge selects 25 more steers plus a few alternates.  I can see where that'd be prohibitive if you sold a lot more head.

As far as the whole sale, the Grands and Reserves sell first, in an order that rotates each year. Then in that same order we sell 5 steers, 5 lambs, and 12 barrows every round for 5 rounds, plus 4 goats in each of the first two rounds.  It generally takes just under 3 hours.

Thank you so much for all your replies.  I think I will try to print this thread to show to our fairboard-lol.  And I agree that I think the steers at the minimum should show for sale order.  I would like to know overall what position my nephews calf was in.  I know that this year, he was not.  And with our TINY fair this shouldn't be a problem.  They have quite a few hogs but I believe the top ten AT LEAST should be in the quality order.  And the lambs and goats should be the same.

And I really like the ideas of rotation of 5 lambs, 5 hogs, 5 steers and so on but I can't imagine that will ever fly here. 

We show for sale order around here.  But where I grew up in Louisiana our sale was randomized and it got kind of confusing, lol.  At our county we were each allowed to sale 1 unit, regardless of placing.  A steer was the only thing that was one unit by itself.  All others were half units.  In my entire career, and still to this date I only remember 2 steers ever selling at our parish sale.  All of our steers were headed to the State Fair and we could not continue showing the animal after it sold.  So basically we each sold 2, it was based on your placing in your class, but the rule was everyone got to sell one before anybody sold their 2nd.  It also got confusing because it wasnt uncommone for some kids to have 4 or 5 hogs showing at our fair, because we could sell 2 there and still potentially get 3 in the sale at State Fair of Louisiana.  So there were a lot of kids that had 2 to sell at Parish and then 3 to take on to State Fair, and we could show all 5 at Parish, just only sell 2. So basically the way it went was the kid who showed champions sold their highest placing sale animal first, followed by the kid who had reserve selling thier highest placing, unless the same kid showed Grand and Res, then the kid led off the 2nd round of the sale.  It was a very confusing way to do sale order but it worked and there were no complaints and they felt it was the fairest way since most of the high placing animals never sold at our Parish sale.
I understand the showing for sale order, especially when you only sale a certain percentage, that way the best animals in the judges opinion are the ones to sale.  However, I also really support the idea of selling by class placing from class 1 and then going in order.  After all, these jr sales are not typical auctions, they are "Premium" sales.  And premiums are typically paid based on how you placed in your class, so I kind of feel the Premium Sale should kind of follow the same order.  The way I kind of see it, your champions are ussually all in the same 2 or 3 classes, all the people seriously trying to win the show are spending the money on the calves to target that weight, what about the kid that knows he/she cant afford to compete with those people, so they use their money judiciously and buy the cheaper calf to target for the light weights or the very heavy weights, just so they can at least be more competivive in their class.  Do they not deserve the chance at the sale just as much as the kids that spent a lot more money trying to win the whole thing?  I think there are pros and cons to both situations, unfortunately  there is no way to make a perfect system so I think you just have to roll with the system you have and be happy with it.
If you go and try to change it to a system that you personally like better, then someone else is not going to think that is fair and they will be coming right back trying to change it back in a few years.

It sounds like the sale order is an issue where either only a limited number of animals sell or maybe the money plays out the further down the sale order you are. As stated in another thread, we have a committee that knows about how much premium there is and divides it equitably among all the steers, with even the bottom steers in each class receiving a good premium above the market. In our show, the biggest advantage to going early in the sale order is getting your stuff packed up and headed down the road while others are still in line.

Grand and Reserve champions, then breed champions, the by ribbon color purple-blue-red-white