By Howard Wilkinson
The Cincinnati Enquirer

Ryan Daulton, 17, of Georgetown, Ohio and Trent Printz, 19, of Arcanum, Ohio talk as Ryan works with his grand champion winning market lamb. (Steven M. Herppich photo) | ZOOM |

COLUMBUS - If you look at Ryan Daulton's grand champion Hampshire lamb in its pen at the Ohio State Fair and all you can see are lamb chops and roasted leg of lamb on a platter, the Brown County teenager won't mind a bit.

He'd probably bring the mint jelly.

"He'll end up under a knife and fork," said the 17-year-old, the third and last of Dennis Daulton's children to raise market lambs for show on the family's three-acre plot just south of Georgetown.

"But that's what he's for. To eat."

Ryan Daulton's attitude about the animal he has washed, fed, groomed and walked for countless hours is understandable. That 120-pound lamb lazily nibbling feed Friday in his state fair pen will most likely, on Wednesday night, mean a five-figure payday for the Brown County teen who raised him when the lamb is sold at auction in the Ohio State Fair's Sale of Champions.

The grand champion market lamb at the Ohio State Fair has fetched as much as $30,000.

"Whatever money I get, it goes to my college education," said Ryan, as fair-goers paused to pet the nose of his prize lamb. "Lambs will put me through college."

It is a dream pursued by nearly 5,000 Ohioans ages 9 to 19. Every year, the 4-H and Future Farmers of America members haul their beef cattle, lambs, pigs and chickens to the Ohio Expo Center for the Junior Fair competition.

Ohio's Junior Fair is the largest in the country. It is also one of the oldest, having started in 1929.

The Sale of Champions began in 1968, an invention of then-Gov. James Rhodes, who would show up at the sale every year to cajole business people to make bids.

Sales in the first year amounted to $22,674. In 2002, the grand champion market lamb alone went for nearly that much.

This year, fair officials are expecting bidders to put up more than $200,000 for the prize-winning animals.

Livestock: It's a business

"Blue ribbon business." Chart shows various cuts of meat from a cow. Click to view chart. (AP photo) | ZOOM |

No one is more aware of the rising prices than the families who have raised and sold livestock for generations. For the city folk who wander through the barns with their children to see the animals, it may seem cold that a young person could raise an animal, just to see it be sold and slaughtered.

But these are farm kids.

They have dogs and cats and goldfish they become attached to.

For them, livestock is more than blue ribbons and bales of hay. It's a business.

"You can't become attached to them," said Ryan. "You've got to remember that they're market animals."

All of the kids who enter the competitions dream of having the "grand champion" sign hung over their animal's pen. Hillary Myers, an 18-year-old from Owensville in Clermont County, was no exception. She had high hopes for her 1,290-pound market steer, Famous Amos.

But it was not to be - she placed third in her class and brought the animal home to the barn behind her parents' house last week.

"We may slaughter him ourselves, or I may put him in a few more shows," Myers said. "It's a very competitive business. You just put your animal out there and take your chances."

For the lucky handful of those who show at the state fair - those whose animals are chosen grand champions or reserve champions (essentially, second place) - the rewards are enormous. That's because a wide variety of Ohio companies are lined up to bid at the Sale of Champions.

In the makeshift tent barn set aside on the fairgrounds for the animals that will be sold Wednesday night, Ryan's lamb is across the way from the grand champion market steer, about 1,300 pounds of beef-on-the-hoof raised by 19-year-old Trent Printz on his family's farm near Arcanum, Ohio, about 90 miles northwest of Cincinnati.

Printz is in for an even bigger payday than his friend Ryan - the grand champion market steer is always the big-ticket item at the Sale of Champions; it draws the most attention and the most money from bidders. Two years ago, the Kroger Co., the Cincinnati-based grocery chain, paid $75,000 for the grand champion steer.

The young person who raises the animal does not see all of that money. Eight years ago, the fair placed caps on how much an exhibitor can earn. For the grand champion market steer, it is about $20,000. Any amount the animal draws above the cap is distributed to other exhibitors through the fair's Youth Reserve program.

But for Printz, who will study biology and animal sciences at Wilmington College this fall, that $20,000 would just about take care of his freshman year.

"This was my last chance to bring in a grand champion," said Printz. "I've been showing since I was 9 years old. And, this year, it paid off."

Big money for big animals

Based on recent history at the state fair, odds are that Printz' prize-winning steer will go to Kroger. The grocery chain has bought the Grand Champion three years in a row and dominates the Sale of Champions bidding.

Many companies compete at the Sale of Champions - such grocery chains as Meijer and Big Bear and companies as diverse as Longaberger Baskets and a Columbus auto dealership.

But Kroger has most of the record prices for grand champions - $75,000 for the market steer, $30,000 for the market lamb, $18,000 for the meat chickens, records all set in 2001.

Bill Lesko, Kroger's Columbus-area meat merchandiser, heads the Cincinnati grocery chain's team at the fair. His 18 years in that post have earned him a spot in the Ohio State Fair Hall of Fame.

"We don't need to do this to put meat in the stores," Lesko said. "We do this as a payback to the kids who work so hard through the year. Kroger is a business that depends on agriculture."

Kroger and the other companies "give back" by paying prices far above normal market prices for animals they don't really need.

Nonetheless, if Kroger ends up buying Printz' grand champion market steer Wednesday night, the animal will end up being butchered and in a meat case somewhere. In return, Lesko said, Kroger will donate a pound of ground beef to the Central Ohio Food Bank for every pound the grand champion weighs.

"We want to donate the meat, but the Food Bank doesn't really need filet mignon," he said.

From barns to store shelves

The Sale of Champions is where the big money is spent, but that involves only a handful of the thousands of young people who exhibit at the fair.

That, Lesko said, is why a 25-person team of Kroger meat-cutters, merchandisers and executives went to the Market Lamb Sale at the Brown Building Saturday night and bought 240 lambs raised by several dozen Ohio kids.

"Those kids work just as hard as the Grand Champion kids," Lesko said.

After the sale, the lambs were loaded on to a truck and hauled to a Columbus area slaughterhouse. Early this week, the carcasses were shipped to the meat departments of about 60 Columbus-area Kroger stores to be cut and put in the meat cases in what has become a popular annual promotion - the sale of State Fair lamb.

At the noon hour Thursday, in a brand-new Kroger store in the northwest Columbus suburb of Powell, head meat-cutter Paula Gorsuch deftly slung a 100-pound lamb carcass on to the cutting table and began slicing it up with a large electric band saw.

Gorsuch was there when the lambs were bought Saturday night and met most of the kids who raised them.

"They're such good kids, and they work so hard," said Gorsuch, who turned the carcasses into stacks of lamb chops, roasts, loins and legs in just minutes. "It does your heart good."

Record prices paid at Ohio State Fair

• Grand Champion Market Beef : $75,000 (2001)

Purchased by: Kroger Co., Cincinnati-based grocery chain.

• Reserve Champion Market Beef: $23,500 (2000)

Purchased by: Steve R. Rauch Inc., a Columbus plumbing company.

• Grand Champion Barrow: $64,000 (1996)

Purchased by: Big Bear Stores, a Columbus-based grocer.

• Reserve Champion Barrow: $15,000 (2000)

Purchased by: Huffman's Market and Wells Bros. Electric, both of central Ohio.

• Grand Champion Market Lamb: $30,000 (2001)

Purchased by: Kroger.

• Reserve Champion Market Lamb: $12,500 (2001)

Purchased by: Swan Cleaners and Nelson Auto Group, both of Central Ohio.

• Grand Champion Meat Chickens: $18,000 (2001)

Purchased by: Kroger.

• Reserve Champion Meat Chickens: $10,000 (2001)

Purchased by: Grocery chain Meijer Inc. and Pilgrims Pride, a Meijer-owned grocery chain.

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Source: The Ohio State Fair

• Information: www.ohiostatefair.com