Bexar County Junior Livestock Show: Nursery Grower Lists Lambs by the Gallon
Volunteer From an East Side Wholesale Nursery Types the Sale Order as an Availability List, and Landscape Crews Arrive With Flatbeds
SAN ANTONIO, Texas — The Bexar County Junior Livestock Show sale order went out this week in a format no one at the show had seen before. It had a column for container size, a column for sun exposure, and a note at the bottom: prices good while supplies last, ask about volume discounts on goats. The document was prepared by a volunteer who runs a wholesale nursery a few miles from the show grounds on FM 1346. He was put in charge of the paperwork because everyone else was tearing down and resetting the arena. The sale had come home to the grounds this year, and the reset had to be finished first. “They said type up the sale order,” the volunteer told Farm.FM. “I have typed up the same thing every Monday for 31 years. It’s called an availability list. I assumed livestock worked the same way. Nobody told me it didn’t.”How Bexar County Agriculture Became Mostly Shrubs
In fairness to the volunteer, he lives in a county where the nursery business is agriculture. According to the 2022 Census of Agriculture profile for Bexar County, nursery, greenhouse, floriculture and sod sales came to more than $34 million, eighth in Texas and nearly half of everything the county’s farms sold. “Half,” the volunteer said. “Cattle, hogs, sheep, goats, horses, hay, wheat, all of it together, and the plants are still nearly half. In Bexar County a cow is a specialty crop.” He has spent his career selling live oaks, boxwoods and flats of lantana to the landscape crews that follow new rooftops around Loop 1604. He saw no reason to change the system for a few hundred 4-H and FFA exhibitors.The Bexar County Junior Livestock Show Availability List
Selected entries, as printed:- Market lamb, crossbred, 15-gal. Full sun. Moderate water. Responds well to being told he is handsome. Qty: many.
- Market goat, Boer, 15-gal. Deer resistant: debatable. Fence resistant: confirmed. Will eat your other inventory.
- Barrow, 45-gal. Not drought tolerant. Extremely mud tolerant. Hardy. Opinionated.
- Rabbit, sold as liner. Fast grower. Do not plant.
- Heifer, field-grown, B&B. Ask about delivery. Ask about everything, really.
- Ag mechanics trailer, bare root. Ships with hitch. Customer must supply truck.
Landscape Crews Answer the Ad
The list went out on Monday to the volunteer’s usual customers, because that is where Monday lists go. By Tuesday morning there were four flatbeds and a crew-cab dually in the gravel lot. A landscape contractor from the north side wanted “a matched pair of Hampshire lambs, 15-gallon, for a gated entrance off 1604.” Another asked for 40 goats “in flats, if you have them in flats.” A third had a design plan showing a market barrow in the median of a cul-de-sac. It was labeled focal point. A senior from East Central FFA met them at the gate with a clipboard and a calm she later said she had learned from a heifer. “These aren’t plants,” she said. “They’re projects. They don’t come with a care tag. They come with a record book. You don’t install them. You come to the auction, you bid, and you support a kid.” The contractor with the cul-de-sac asked whether the barrow would at least come in a pot. “He weighs 270 pounds,” she said. “He is the pot.” Two of the contractors stayed for the sale. One bought a lamb. He told the ringman he had planned to put it by a mailbox, and he now understood that this had been “a planning error.”Hogs Rank Seventh, Which the Volunteer Calls a Growth Category
By midweek the volunteer had read the rest of the census. He found things to like. Bexar County ranks seventh in Texas for hog sales and fourteenth for horses, which the volunteer called “strong regional placement for non-woody inventory.” More than half of the county’s 2,107 farms are between 10 and 49 acres. He noted that most of them would fit on his back lot “if they were containerized.” “Do not containerize the farms,” said an FFA junior who was walking past with a bucket. “I wasn’t going to,” the volunteer said. “Out loud.”Bexar County 4-H and FFA Members Rewrite the List by Lunch
The exhibitors fixed it on Wednesday, between chores. Three FFA members and a 4-H rabbit exhibitor took the availability list to a picnic table and rewrote it as a sale order. It had lot numbers, exhibitor names, clubs and chapters, and no container sizes. A rabbit exhibitor who had only just met the age rule handled the formatting. The rule says exhibitors must turn eight by September 1 and have entered third grade. What finally won the volunteer over was validation. He asked how the show tracks its inventory. The exhibitors explained that animals have to be validated to show, and that a BCJLS validation tag for a lamb, goat or pig costs $5 cash. Tags are sold only at certain validation events, and there is no pre-order. “No pre-order,” he repeated. “You show up with five dollars and an animal,” the rabbit exhibitor said. “That’s the system.” In his business, he said, everything is pre-ordered by February, and every barcode is wrong about a third of the time. “You people have a five-dollar tag, no pre-order, cash only, and it works,” he said. “That is the most efficient supply chain in Bexar County, and it’s run by children holding goats.” The show, established in 1963, ran on the exhibitors’ version. The lambs went home with buyers, not landscapers. The barrow stayed out of the cul-de-sac.Back at the Nursery
The following Monday, the volunteer’s crew arrived at the nursery and found every shrub on the back lot wearing a show card. Live oak, 30-gal. Class 3. Reserve Champion. Boxwood, 5-gal. Showmanship, Intermediate. One flat of lantana had been placed fourth out of four, with handwritten reasons: “Good color, lacks depth of rib.” The Monday availability list did not go out. In its place, customers got an invitation to the nursery’s first premium sale, Saturday at 9 a.m. The volunteer called the auction himself, from a ladder. No landscaper bid. The only buyer was the rabbit exhibitor. She bought the Reserve Champion live oak for $5 cash and asked that it be delivered to her school’s ag barn. “No pre-order,” she said. “No pre-order,” the volunteer agreed, and wrote her a receipt with a lot number on it.Five Humorous Observations About Texas 4-H Livestock Shows
- Bexar County sells more shrubs than cattle, hogs, sheep and goats put together. Explain that to a show lamb. This show has been running since 1963 and he’s still outranked by a boxwood.
- A landscape contractor asked for goats “in flats.” Sir, the goats decide what they come in. Mostly they come in through the fence.
- “He is the pot.” That’s the whole 4-H program in four words. The kid learned that from a heifer, and the contractor learned it from the kid.
- Five dollars cash, no pre-order, and the system works. Every software company in San Antonio should be made to stand in line at a Bexar County validation event and watch.
- The man ran a nursery for 31 years, and one week at the show grounds had him placing lantana and calling an auction from a ladder. Hay fever you can get over. Show fever, you just keep feeding.