“Holding the kids’ checks hasn’t been incentive enough to get (buyers) to pay in a timely fashion,” he said.
Ayres collected the last dollars from the 2011 sale in the first weekend of June 2012. The seller of the animal doesn’t get a check for the sale until all of the money has been collected.
In the next few years, the Ohio Department of Agriculture will make it mandatory for fairs to include livestock auctions in their final numbers, which means all sales have to be finalized and collected by the end of the fiscal year in November.
Ayres said the board had to put steps in place to prepare for that change.
Staci Fulk’s children have been showing hogs and chickens for several years and she isn’t happy about the new rule.
“If people are going to speak up and sponsor a kid, they should be responsible to pay up,” she said.
Robyn Callicoat’s children have been showing hogs and steers for several years as well. She said she appreciated the change to this year’s sales.
“I do like the credit card,” she said. “There’s more responsibility there.”
Brent Pence’s daughter is showing a sheep for the first time this year. He said sales have changed since he began showing in the 1980s and ’90s.
“There’s probably no way to fix it or go back,” he said. “I totally understand because somebody has to be responsible.”
Pence said it is great that people want to help local kids, but it is sad to have a rule requiring credit cards because of the lack of responsibility.
“For this to drag on almost a year, it’s unacceptable,” Ayres said.
Ayres said the 2011 fair drew more than $917,000 last year and the average sale was about $700. The amount of money made at Clark County Fair auctions is large in comparison to the rest of the state.
“When we go to the Ohio Fair Managers Convention, people are just blown away by our numbers,” Ayres said.
Another change to this year’s auction is that animal projects cannot be taken back to the farm. All animals have to be sold to producers or to a custom processor, Ayres said. In the past, sheep, goat and dairy feeder projects could be taken home.
“We took the option away to make it more of a real life experience,” he said.
All three parents said they didn’t mind that rule because they had never taken the animals home in the past.
“I don’t mind a terminal sale because it’s for a reason,” Callicoat said.
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