More buyers than animals: Bid for the Kid sale ends in success
The final weigh-ins for the Bid for the Kid livestock sale took place on Saturday morning at the Porterville Fairgrounds barn, where there was a long line of trucks waiting even before the 9 a.m start time hit.
Trailers filled with sheeps and goats were hauled to the fairgrounds on Saturday morning, and this group of animals was last to be weighed. Last Saturday, swine animals were weighed and just days later, beef was weighed, before heading out to slaughter. The process for the sheeps and goats was much the same.
Sheeps were being dropped off by the dozen. One trailer carried at least 15 sheep for the weigh-in, and had several goats to drop off as well.
As the animals were removed from the trailers they were held in a large holding pin, before being herded one by one into a single file line into the weigh-in chute. Each animal was weighed individually, and then marked for either wholesale or resale. A big blue stripe down the animals spine let the volunteers working know which animals were headed to slaughter and which were for resale. Resale means that the slaughterhouse had purchased the animal at a set price. Wholesale means an individual purchased the animal and will receive the meat from it.
Most of the sheeps that were being weighed came well over 100 pounds. As weights were called out, it was revealed that some of the sheeps were weighing in at 130 pounds or more. One sheep came in at just under 130 pounds, at 127 pounds, and another sheep weighed-in at 112 pounds.
Goats were weighed on the same certified scale that the sheeps were. Several goats weighed in over 70 pounds. One goat weighed 79 pounds, and the goat immediately after weighed 69 pounds.
It would seem that this year’s BID for the Kid sale was quite the success despite the stay-athome order due to the coronavirus pandemic.
“I’ll know more come Tuesday,” said John Corkins, chairman of the livestock board for the Porterville Fair. “Right now, it has exceeded our expectations on hogs and beef. We are way above what we expected to be. I don’t want to give a number yet because we haven’t balanced every
thing, but last year’s sale we did about $570,000 with $235,000 in addons, and that’s just addon money added on to the kids. This year, we were originally hoping to hit about $200,000. I’m now hoping to hit about $300,000.”
Once all of the animals had been weighedin, they were taken to a slaughterhouse in Davis, Ca. that evening. The animals that were marked with blue will be brought back to one of the four meat locker locations used for the sale.
“The community has been fantastic,” said Corkins. “Frankly, we’ve had more buyers than animals, which is a really good problem to have. So, it’s gone really well and people have been really cooperative.”