Clerking a Hog Sale

On the weekend of April 9 I went to Basin to see the guy, meet his mother (I was nervous, and she knows my family) and clerk a club hog sale. It's that time of year in Wyoming, when 4-H and FFA kids are buying their sheep and hog projects for the year.
Well, I was doing good on getting photos of the happenings, up until the actual people started showing up and the sale started...oops.
We will stumble through with what I managed to capture, and I'll fill in the blanks.

Hogs were provided by two places - the guy and his brother being one (club hogs were one of his FFA projects, and now his brother is taking it over), and another local family. As the pigs were unloaded they were tagged to determine where they came from, washed, and sorted into a number of pens we put sawdust in.


The pens they were sorted into are on the right. The alleyway the girl is in was what was used to bring pigs into the sale ring.


On the far left are where the pigs were penned back. So, the whole system was in the shape of a big U, and worked really well. Pigs would come out of their pens, into the alley, from there to the sale ring, then into the return alley and into another pen.


Pearl and Emmie were there too, and Pearl was in the midst of the whole thing, as usual. Emmie was patiently waiting and seeking affection from strangers during all this. Seeing as how the guy is an auctioneer, we put on a live auction (yep, imagine that). Here he is getting the table and his speakers set up.



We set up straw bales and folding chairs for people to sit on during the auction. One of the things I thought was especially neat was he had the kids bid on the pigs, as opposed to their parents, and gave them plenty of time to make up their minds. It was cute to see how into it some of them got.
Pearl was also a big hit, as she spent the entire sale pacing the fence line of the sale ring, turning back (nipping/biting) any pigs that got too close. Had I not been so busy clerking, and stuck behind the table, I would have put an end to it. But, she wasn't barking, or being too aggressive with them, and the entire crowd found her quite entertaining.
A sale, and a show I guess.


And just like that, when you forget to take pictures, the sale's over and it's time to load out the pigs. Most were packed like this..and no, that's not his car.