Going, Going, Gone . . . Prized ‘Projects’ Auctioned

With smiles and some tears, dozens of kids put their prized animals on the auction block Friday at the Ventura County Fair.

Because many of the participants had spent months feeding, exercising and grooming their animals, for some the experience was more akin to saying goodbye to a close friend.

Behind the scenes in the livestock holding area, everyone wanted to look his or her best. Owners chased sprinting pigs, lambs received a final brushing and 4-H Club members braided one another’s hair or straightened one another’s ties.

Britteny Cocklin, 14, of Ojai cleaned wood chips off Buddy, her 252-pound Duroc pig, to make sure he was ready for the auction. Britteny hoped Buddy would fetch a good price, partly because he had a such a nice personality.

“He’s really good with people, but when it comes to food he’s a little edgy,” she said. “He fights every single pig until he gets all of it.”

Buddy was Britteny’s first pig. Raising him was not unlike caring for a cat or dog, she said.

“I think it’s not that much different, other than the smell,” Britteny said. “But once you get used to it, it’s like nothing.”

In the end, Buddy sold for $3.25 a pound, an average price for pigs at Friday’s auction. The daylong event ran nonstop, with chickens, swine, lambs, goats, rabbits, steers and heifers all parading in front of bidders as a rapid-fire auctioneer barked out prices.

Animals with more impressive resumes fetched higher prices. Spankey, a 138-pound grand champion blue Suffolk sheep owned by Brittany Nelson, 12, of Santa Paula sold for $14 a pound, more than twice the price of most sheep. For the past five months, Brittany had fed him, walked him and groomed him. She cried after the auction when she realized she would soon have to part with her friend.

Other participants were happy to make their animals someone else’s responsibility. Carl Stephens, 16, of Ojai has raised small animals in the past, but this year he entered Anguish, his 1,023-pound black Angus steer.

“You have to dedicate a lot more time into them,” Carl said. “I have time that just opened up to me now.”

Steers owned by Carl and his sister, Tiare, 19, placed first and second in their class. Tiare Stephens raised Thadeus, a 1,001-pound red Angus, but said she was not emotionally invested in her first-place animal.

“I don’t get attached to them, because I know what’s going to happen to them,” she said.

Although most kids said they tried to look at their animals as projects and not as pets, many conceded that they had developed something of an attachment to their animals.

“You have to learn at the start that you have to sell him,” said Timothy Nicholl, 10, of Oak View. Timothy’s Hampshire pig, Big Bacon Classic, sold for an impressive $7 a pound, after he became the object of a bidding war between Timothy’s grandfather and his 4-H swine leader, who had the winning bid.

For other participants, the auction prompted a family feud. While most sheep sold for about $5 a pound, Meelee Hansen, 15, of Fillmore sold hers for $18.50 a pound. Her 130-pound Molly was the focus of a raucous bidding battle between her uncle and her father, who eventually bowed out.

“I was really embarrassed,” Meelee said.