Junior Fair livestock weigh-in scheduled

VW County Junior Fair information

Sheep, goat, and dairy feeder weigh-in will be Saturday, June 6, at the Van Wert County Fairgrounds. Dairy feeders will weigh in at the Beef Barn and sheep and goats will weigh in at the Hog Barn.

All exhibitors should enter off of Fox Road (Gate 4), and acquire their trailer number and further instructions so they can be tagged in a timely fashion.

Once parked, exhibitors should wait until their animals are identified before they cross the scales. Sheep and goat exhibitors may directly enter the scales as their identification is their USDA scrapies tag. Weigh-in will begin at 7:30 a.m. and last until 10:30 that morning.

As a reminder, family tagging will no longer be permitted. As directed by Dr. Tony Forshey, state veterinarian for the Ohio Department of Agriculture, there will be no animals permitted to be tagged in a family name.

901-19-39 Ownership Requirements of the Ohio Exhibition Rules, Section A (market animals) and Section B (breeding animals) reads: “No person shall enter or exhibit livestock … the person has owned not less than. …”

The new regulation notes the specifically explained “person” is not a family and Dr. Forshey has asked that all counties follow this rule. As a result, those tagging will only permit one name per hog.

“This is a rule that is beyond the control of the county level, and if we fail to follow it we could lose state funding for the Junior Fair program,” said Ohio State University Extension Educator Heather Gottke.

Members are permitted to tag a maximum of five dairy feeders and weigh in a maximum of five market and five performance sheep, and five dairy market and five boar market goats.

Hog exhibitors will be asked to pick up identification tags for their animals and return the paperwork and required photo identification in lieu of physically tagging. No hogs are to be brought on the fairgrounds for any of the tagging events. FFA Members will be given tags by their advisors. 4-H Members can pick up their tags on June 6, from 8-11 a.m., during the weigh-in for dairy feeders, goat and sheep at the south end of the fairgrounds near the Farm Focus Arena.