Bravely bidding adieu: 4-H, FFA kids auction off livestock they've lovingly raised
By KIM BRIGGEMAN of the Missoulian
If sheep could talk, Jack would be speechless.
He's a striking and, it turns out, muscular steel-gray wether who just completed a dream week at the Western Montana Fair.
“Now I have to let him go,” sighed Tiffany Woldstad, her voice cracking. “It'll be hard. He's my little grand champion boy.”
Jack was the top lamb at the fair's 4-H show on Wednesday. On Saturday, he brought top dollar at the 4-H and FFA Livestock Sale among the wool and mutton set - a tidy $6.20 for each of his 151 pounds.
Karl Tyler, the local Chevrolet dealer, bought Woldstad's lamb to complete an auction triple play. Earlier Tyler paid $3.60 a pound to take home Lyla Severson's grand champion beef. Then he teamed with Metalworks of Montana to secure Ryan Mangun's first-place hog for $7 a pound.
“Now I've got to go catch me a calf,” said Tyler, who was due up at the matinee performance in tie-down roping at the Missoula Stampede.
Woldstad, a sophomore at Missoula Hellgate and member of the Potomac Valley 4-H Club, considered Jack a prizewinner going into the week - even if no one else did.
“I didn't think he was a grand champion. I thought he was, like, purple ribbon because the Parrishes always win (grand champion),” she said.
Indeed, Ryan Parrish of the Blue Mountain 4-H Club raised and showed the reserve champion, which fetched $6 a pound at the sale. The Missoula Big Sky senior had the grand champion last year and the reserve champ the year before that. Older brother Jayme Parrish won it all, for the fourth time, in 2005.
Meanwhile, Woldstad's first 4-H lamb last year earned just a red ribbon, as did little brother Darren's. This time Darren, 10, got a purple and won his class with Jill. Both lambs were purchased from Gerry Hatheway of Potomac in May.
TOM BAUER/Missoulian Roy Schutter leads his hog around the sale ring at the 4-H and FFA Livestock Sale at the Western Montana Fair on Saturday. Sale prices for livestock seemed to be up this year compared with last.
“The difference is that last year we didn't work with them that hard, and this year we did,” Tiffany said. “What we did was we actually took them up and down the mountain, which is a pretty good hike.”
“Tiffany had it easy. She got to ride the lawnmower,” interjected Darren, who goes to Bonner Grade School.
“Well, I broke my toes,” she pointed out to her brother.
That happened a little over a month ago, when she fell into a creek, landed on a branch and broke the two smallest toes on one foot.
“My second toe was where my little toe is supposed to be,” she said. “Then I had to get pins in my little toe, and they still feel a little bit broken.”
The siblings' mother, Amy Woldstad, did some of the heavy-duty climbing with Jack and Jill, sometimes straight up the east face of Mount Jumbo near their Marshall Grade home.
“Another way we exercised him is he actually pulled Darren on the grass in an ice-fishing sled,” Tiffany said. “It builds up all the muscle.”
Both Suffolk-Hampshire crosses, Jack and Jill's most visible characteristics are their dark gray coats, which make them stand out from the mostly white-wool crowd.
But what Tiffany noticed about Jack as the summer went on was his muscle. Born in February, he grew to 151 pounds - heavier than all but one other 4-H lamb at the fair.
The judge noticed it, too.
“She said he was all muscle, which is what I said before I went in. But no one believed me,” Tiffany said.
That muscle, and her ailing toes, didn't make for smooth sailing in the show ring. Jack got away from her twice during the judging.
“And yesterday I was in showmanship and he drug me through the pen and I had to wrestle him to the ground,” she said.
She ushered Jack around the sale ring Saturday morning in something akin to a headlock. Jack was agreeable, for the most part, stopping only once to do some necessary business.
The bidding closed at one point at $5.50, and auctioneer Carl Saunders had Jack chalked up to another buyer before Tyler said he wasn't ready to stop.
“Then they started shouting out numbers - OK, 5.50, six dollars, 6.10, 6.20,” Tiffany Woldstad said. “That was kind of confusing for me, the ending. I wasn't sure when I had to go out and when I had to stay.”
Jack, who cost about $120, sold for $936.20. In addition, by winning grand champion, the Woldstads will get a refund on Jack's share of the feed that ADM Alliance Nutrition delivered to their home each month - another $50 or so.
“I'm going to try to use the money to get a steer next year, and build a better fence for it,” Tiffany said. “They cost anywhere from $600 to $700, easily, from the people I might be getting it from.”
Forty beef cattle, 110 hogs, 79 sheep and three chickens went through the sale ring Saturday.
Though final figures weren't available, Tyler said sale prices were up from last year. He could only conjecture why.
“Maybe the kids put more time into their animals,” he said.
Tyler, who purchased a number of other animals, paid more than $6,000 for the three grand champions alone.
It was what he came to do, he said. He had the same trifecta a few years ago. Last year, Bitterroot Motors bought all three grand champions at the fair, and Tyler had the three reserve champions. The year before, Les Schwab Tires purchased all three winners.
FFA and 4-H remain vital parts of western Montana, said Tyler, who was in both when he was young.
“They teach hard work, economics, and life and death lessons,” he said. “You realize that a lot of times your animal will die. If the kids put out a genuine effort, I think they need to be rewarded.”
