Jr. Fair members bid farewell to animals at auction

By JORDYN GRZELEWSKI

jgrzelewski@vindy.com

CANFIELD

The auctioneer’s rapid-fire shouts boomed through the coliseum, where hundreds of people had gathered to participate in a Junior Fair auction.

Chairs lined the building, and dozens of people peered down from balcony seats as Junior Fair members smilingly showed off the animals they had hand-raised for several months.

The auctions – which take place Thursday, Friday and Sunday at the Canfield Fair – are the culmination of months of hard work for hundreds of Junior Fair members. Junior Fair members sell lambs, goats, pigs, poultry, cows and more.

Ward Campbell, the fair director who oversees Junior Fair, explained that Junior Fair members who show animals typically get their animals in the spring or summer before the fair. Participants first show their animals, which are judged.

“You will see the kids who did the most work, made the most contacts, get the highest prices for their animals,” he said.

“A lot of them get up in the morning before school and take care of their animals. They teach them to handle,” he said. “They have to show themselves off to the best advantage to the judges.”

Brittany Siembieda, who just graduated from South Range High School, said she did a pretty good job of lining up potential buyers ahead of the auctions. On Friday evening, she was auctioning off some of her broiler chickens.

Siembieda said raising animals means she is regularly checking up on them.

“I make sure they’re all OK. I kind of act like a mother hen toward them,” she said.

Along with selling chickens for a profit – she said she takes home a few hundred dollars each fair – Siembieda also participates in auctions that benefit Junior Fair scholarships.

As for how she feels when she sells her animals, she admitted it can be a little sad.

“I try to give them the best life I can before they go,” she said. “These guys eat and live better than I do.”

Also participating in the auctions was Alexis Biscella of Youngstown, a junior at Lowellville High School. For Biscella, who is part of a 4-H club and serves on the Mahoning County Junior Fair Board, this marked her seventh time showing animals at the fair. She sold a pig earlier in the week and was auctioning off a turkey Friday.

She explained that with turkeys, you order them through a registered feed store that connects you with a breeder. You get the bird just hours after it is born.

Biscella had raised the turkey she sold Friday since late April.

“Every morning and evening, I feed and water my animals,” she said. Then, about a month before the fair, she bathes them and makes sure they are clean and ready for auction.

Throughout the process, those who sell animals at auction must maintain detailed records of the animals’ medications and the expenses that go into their care.

Biscella, too, acknowledged that selling an animal can be difficult.

“It’s a feeling that you know is coming, but you know it’s going to feed someone else, and you gave it the best life you could up until now,” she said.