4-H hosts annual livestock auction

Seven Mineral County 4-H Members brought their livestock to the Mineral County Fair Saturday for the club’s annual livestock auction. Each one had worked hard to raise their animal.

Jim Ellis, from Stevensville, was the auctioneer for the event. He said that he has been in the auctioning business for years and has been coming to the Mineral County Fair for around 10 years.

“This fair is great because it’s one of the smaller fairs, and this is how all of the other fairs started out,” Ellis said.

Ellis peppered the auction with jokes and teased the 4-H members, but he said that he was very impressed with their work.

The auction included beef, swine and sheep. Sharon Patterson, with the University of Montana Extension Office and 4-H, said that the 4-H members that raised beef had to have their animals purchased before Jan. 1, those that raised sheep had to purchase their animals before May 1 and those that raised swine had to have their animals purchased by April 15.

4-H members that raise animals for auction also have to purchase their animals at fair market value according to Patterson.

Patterson said that the event has been going on for around 20 years now and it teaches those involved a lot about caring for livestock.

The first animal up for bid was Nicole Stroot’s 296-pound reserve champion pig. It sold for $2.965 per pound to Advantage Port-a-Potty. Dahkota Hayes’s 1,323-pound grand champion steer sold for $2.50 per pound to Mineral Pharmacy. Billy Smith’s 269-pound blue ribbon pig sold for $2.50 per pound to Denley Loge. Matt Hayes’s 147-pound grand champion sheep sold for $4 per pound to Stang’s Market, Wells Fargo, Coke-a-Cola and Jasper’s Restaurant. McKinzey Cooper’s 284-pound grand champion hog sold for $2.75 per pound to Big Sky Motel. Tucker Smith’s 274-pound blue ribbon hog sold for $2.40 per pound to Quality Supply. Travis Stroot, the round robin show winner, sold a 1,000-pound reserve champion heifer for $1.50 per pound to Advantage Port-a-Potty.

After the show, Carole Johnson and MJI Construction also chipped in enough money to bring Stroot’s heifer up to $2.25 per pound.

Loge also auctioned off a brightly colored Hawaiian Shirt for the fourth year in a row to raise money for the 4-H Council.

The shirt brought in $800 on its first bidding but Phil Donely, who bought the shirt, donated it back to be auctioned off again.

The second time around, the shirt only went for $650 but all told Loge’s loudly-colored garment brought $1,450 to the 4-H Council.

Patterson said that the fact that the 4-H members involved get to see some money for their efforts is a positive thing, but since they assume all the cost for purchasing and raising their livestock the actuality is that they usually turn around and spend what little profit they did make on another animal for next year’s auction.

She added that there is a small handling fee taken out of their auction earnings that goes into and account to insure other animals entered in the auction.

Patterson said that, at a previous fair, a bear mauled two sheep two weeks before the event. That year, several people auctioned off extra livestock they had to help the family pay for the cost of the two sheep. Patterson said that, after that incident, organizers added the handling fee so that if anything happened to 4-H livestock there would be some money to help out.