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Livestock auction full of life lessons

While young exhibitors at the Hernando County Fair learn such business skills as marketing and money management, buyers teach the importance of giving back.

By BETH N. GRAY
Published April 25, 2005

	[Times photo: Daniel Wallace]
	McKenna Tafelski, 14, foreground, of Brooksville sits with her pig, Oprah, before the livestock auction Saturday at the Hernando County Fair. This is her fourth year showing livestock at the fair. "I enjoy it, but saying goodbye is tough," she said.

BROOKSVILLE - Scott Keske came home again and experienced the other side of the coin.

At Saturday's livestock auction at the Hernando County Fair and Youth Livestock Show, Keske, who exhibited the fair's 1977 grand champion steer, bought this year's grand champion.

The longtime resident of Dallas said he always wanted to come back to support the program that gave him so much pleasure, work experience and financial reward as a Hernando 4-H Club member in the 1970s.

This was the first year Keske could schedule a leave from his insulation business to coincide with the fair, he said. His mission: Buy the steer champ, pay back.

Keske doggedly bid from the opening offer of $1.50 a pound as the auctioneer upped his queries a nickel at a time. Keske's winning bid stood at $2.10 a pound. He wrote a $2,856 check for the 1,360-pound black crossbred steer raised by 17-year-old Skye Estrada of the Future Cattlemen 4-H Club.

In 1977, McDonald's bought Keske's champion for about $1.50 a pound, he recalled.

Keske was prepared to bid higher.

"I had no idea they'd go this cheap," he said.

Fair general manager Deb Pedone had mingled with some 200 prospective buyers at a free presale steak dinner sponsored by the Hernando County Cattlemen's Association. She urged them to loosen up their wallets and flaunt their checkbooks. Champion steers at county fairs in Citrus and Pasco regularly command $4 a pound - hogs, $8 to $11 a pound - she told them.

While prices didn't approach such numbers at the Hernando auction, young exhibitors weren't complaining.

Before the bidding, Estrada, a first-year exhibitor, said, "I'm not hoping for anything. Two dollars a pound would be great, but I'd take $1.50."

"We're just here to have fun," said the daughter of Mark and Kim Estrada of Brooksville. "I will be showing a steer again next year."

Dr. Jim Cummings, a Brooksville general practitioner, and his wife, Claudia, were as determined in their bidding on the reserve grand champion as was Keske for the show topper. In the end, the Cummingses' winning offer topped Keske's. They paid $2.15 a pound for the 1,230-pound Angus-Maine Anjou crossbred raised by Britton Tafelski, 17, a member of All Creatures Great and Small 4-H Club. Tafelski acknowledged he had one of the great creatures.

Having purchased the grand champion last year, Cummings said he didn't bid on this year's victor because he had looked over the offering and liked the reserve better.

The Cummings family runs a herd of some 25 commercial cattle - "Florida scrubs," Cummings said - on a farm in the Spring Lake area.

So, why would they purchase a steer for the freezer?

"I didn't want to raise one to kill," Cummings said.

When asked whether their cattle are perceived as pets, Claudia Cummings nodded vigorously behind her husband's back.

"And we wanted to support the kids (at the fair)," she added.

For Tafelski, a home-schooled high school senior, the $2,644.50 remittance for his steer couldn't come at a better time. Tafelski, the son of Ed and Sandi Tafelski of Brooksville, is looking at colleges, where the money will go toward tuition.

Over six years of raising and showing steers, and eight years with market hogs, the teen said, "This is my last year (of competition) and my first champion. I finally made it."

Another educational institution will profit from $1,083.75 - at $4.25 a pound - paid by veterinarian Doug Davenport for the 255-pound grand champion market hog. The porker was owned and raised by the Brooksville FFA Chapter at Hernando High School.

Davenport's veterinary practice in Spring Hill also bought last year's champion hog, as well as others in recent years. But he acknowledged this year's purchase was one of the highest per-pound prices he has paid.

Davenport said he will divvy up the meat among his five employees.

"I'm going to keep the ham and the chops," he said.

The reserve champ's handler, Margo Stewart, 15, said the money will go back to the FFA chapter for projects.

The daughter of Tamara and Pete Stewart of Brooksville, Stewart only took the pig under her care a few weeks before the county fair because she had been concentrating on feeding and preparing a hog she owned for showing at the Florida State Fair in Tampa.

So, the relatively brief companionship between exhibitor and animal didn't establish enough of a bond to allow Stewart strong feelings about selling it.

FFA adviser Rick Ahrens takes steps to ensure that. Said Stewart: "We're not allowed to name them so people won't think they're pets. We raise them to eat."

The Ahrens name surfaced again at the sale of the reserve grand champion hog. It was raised by 10-year-old Delaney Ahrens, daughter of Rick and Brooks Ahrens of Spring Hill.

Said the second-year hog exhibitor and member of Imagination Creations Scrapbooking 4-H Club of selling her project: "I'm going to be sad, but not the saddest (I've ever been)."

The 270-pound porker brought $2.90 a pound, for a total of $754, from LRE Ground Services of Brooksville.

Delaney, a fourth-grader at Chocochatti Elementary School, didn't know what she would do with her earnings.

Also at Saturday's auction:

-- Simpson Farms of Trilby bid a sale record of $5 a pound for the 265-pound market hog of Rachel Batten, a 16-year-old Brooksville FFA member and daughter of Jayne and Dale Batten. The sale yielded $1,325 for the second-year hog producer.

Simpson bidder Lowell Hapner said he entered the price because of "who it was."

Rachel Batten said of her pig: "I knew he was going to bring a lot. I've been working on marketing and spent all day (Saturday) with the buyers."

Before the fair, she had pitched her project to six potential buyers. She noted that the daughter of Wilton Simpson, owner of Simpson Farms, shows hogs in Pasco County, so Batten thought he would be receptive to supporting another exhibitor.

-- Matthew Batta, 15, last in the sale of 53 pigs with his 220-pound entry, came into the ring on crutches. Unable to hold the usual cane for driving the hog, he alternately swung on his crutches, paused and prodded the swine with a crutch.

The Jolly Rogers 4-H Club member, and son of Loretta and Mark Batta, had been run over by a recalcitrant pig as he helped fellow 4-Hers pen their animals Thursday evening. He was knocked down; his left kneecap popped and the joint cracked. Physical Therapy of Brooksville, where Batta has an appointment today, purchased his hog for $1.80 a pound.

-- Veterinarian Davenport, who bought the grand champion porker, later entered a winning bid of $1.65 for a 210-pound entry of 13-year-old 4-Her Shawn Fincher of Spring Hill. Davenport then approached the auctioneer, announcing he was raising his own bid to $2 a pound, thus shelling out $420, compared to the bid totaling $346.50.

Said Fincher: "I guess he just wanted to put it up."

Fincher noted that Davenport serves as the veterinarian for his mother's pigs, cattle, horses and rabbits.

While several of those showing Saturday do not intend to pursue careers in animal production, they said 4-H and FFA experiences have taught them lessons for whatever they pursue.

Tafelski is looking at a career in evangelism. Of his cattle efforts, he said, "It's taught me patience. Without patience, you're not going to accomplish anything. ... You have to make a relationship, establish a bond, establish trust."

Batten, who envisions enrollment at Harvard or Cambridge and aims to be a lawyer, said her 4-H endeavors have taught her "marketing skills, time management, money management and talking to people."

-- Beth Gray can be reached at graybethn@earthlink.net

[Last modified April 25, 2005, 07:45:02]