As far as anyone can tell, it was the highest selling price of any steer in the history of the Clark County Fair. According to those familiar with the sale, prices had hovered around $6,000 for several years.
“Never give up,” Bumgardner said, a message for her peers. “When your project doesn’t win, when you have bad years. My calves have gotten sick, died, gotten hurt. It just pushed me more.”
Adjusted for inflation, however, the Friday sale doesn’t come close to the grand champion sale in 1986. Its price in 2010 dollars? $21,627.
Bumgardner’s grandfather and long-time fair board member Dana L. Bumgardner remembers that the anomaly 1986 purchase was made by the ride company Clark County contracted at the time.
This year, the money came from many local businesses, as most fair project fundraising goes. But Bumgardner herself managed to raise the normal amount, about $6,200, according to her mother.
What tipped it over the edge? Bumgardner’s father’s business partners, in the agricultural conglomerate MBS Livestock, decided to support the daughter of one of their own.
“They called us up one day, and said, ‘Find out what the record is. We’ll beat it’,” said Emily Bumgardner, Brooke’s mother.
Parents’ connections are often instrumental in securing the donations, which a student receives in addition to the fair market value of their livestock project. In Bumgardner’s case, the value was $1,393.
The market value for the reserve champion was $1,454, both because it weighed more and because a professional livestock buyer assigned it a slightly higher price-per-pound.
This buyer, not to be confused with a donor-buyer, is a middle-man, paying market price for each animal and selling them for meat.
MacKenzie Shuey raised the reserve champion. Or rather, she helped raise the reserve champion. Raising a show steer takes so much time and effort that to do it by oneself would be an all-consuming task, Shuey said.
After a tearful goodbye, both animals were slaughtered Friday evening at Copey’s Butcher Shop in Bethel Township.
Representatives from Copey’s said the business always buys the grand and reserve champion animals from fairs in Clark, Montgomery and Preble counties. That’s “buy” in the traditional sense of the word — from the middle-man company, United Producers Incorporated.
Copey’s has recently started buying in four more county fairs nearby, in addition to sometimes acting like a donor-buyer.
All that to say, in about six weeks — the time it takes for beef to age — meat-lovers can walk into this Clark County butcher shop and buy part of a $13,000 cow.
Kind of.
About the Author