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Once one of the marquee events of the junior fair each year, the livestock auction will be replaced in 2026 by an online platform for supporting exhibitors. In this photo from the 2025 Mercer County Junior Fair Livestock Auction, exhibitor Naomi Knapke shows off the reserve champion market dairy beef cross steer.
CELINA - Instead of the junior fair's annual live auction, this year's Mercer County Fair will feature a showcase honoring participants and a website where donors can make contributions.
Due to a combination of factors, including low auction attendance and success with online contributions, the Mercer County Agricultural Society recently decided to do away with their annual live auction, fairground executive director Cara Muhlenkamp told The Daily Standard.
Instead of holding a live auction to auction off the champions and reserve champions of the market beef, market dairy beef, market dairy steer, market hog, market lamb, market goat, gallon of dairy milk, and gallon of goat milk exhibits, the junior fair will provide a website for people to donate to specific exhibitors after all of the junior fair shows are done, she said.
"You'll be able to go on and find your participant that you would like to support," she said. "There is an option there that you can donate to those participants. Basically if you say that you want to give $50 to John, Sally, and Ted, you can put $50 on each of them. It goes directly to them. It doesn't have anything to (do with getting) the opportunity to take the animal home."
The junior fair has provided a donation website in addition to holding the live auction since 2020.
The 2025 grand champion market lamb was shown by Fort Pioneers member Brynn Huntsman. This year a Champion of Showcase event will honor junior fair participants, scholarship winners and major donors.
Although there will no longer be an auction, exhibitors' livestock will either be harvested or brought back home for production as in years past.
Instead of the auction, Muhlenkamp said the junior fair will hold a Champion of Showcase event to honor junior fair participants, scholarship winners and major donors.
"After further discussion of the live auction, it was determined that it would probably be better to focus more on the participants' achievements and what they have accomplished throughout that show season," she said. "We will be featuring all the grand champions to go through. We will also have a feature for the professional showmanship winners from each species, and then we will also feature our scholarship winners, and then there will also be a feature during the showcase for the top five businesses that have supported the auction."
Honorees, who will include the Champion, Reserve Champion and Professional Showmanship exhibitors, will arrive to the event in a Hummer limo, she added.
The auction shakeup was a unanimous decision made by the Mercer County Agricultural Society, Muhlenkamp said.
"We really want the community to come out and support it," she said. "We want them to come and enjoy this as one last piece of entertainment for the fair and to support the kids, because, really, they're going to bring the energy to help celebrate those kids."
The Champion of Showcase is set for 4 p.m. Aug. 19, at the Grand Event Center.
Though live auction attendance had waned, the event continued to yield record prices as recently as last year.
At the 2025 auction, the grand champion market dairy beef cross steer, shown by Trent Homan of Casella Buckeyes, fetched a record $5,875. The reserve champion market beef steer shown by Riley Weitzel of Mercer County Choice Livestock went for another record price of $15,125.
Another record was set in 2025 by the reserve champion market rabbit, which sold for $3,050. It was shown by Happy Hearts member Lanna Zahn.
The 2025 gallon of dairy milk, shown by Casella Buckeyes member Paige Stachler, sold for $13,350. Proceeds from the dairy cow milk were shared between the winning exhibitor, who took home 10%; all other dairy exhibitors, 70%; the livestock auction committee, 10%; and the dairy exhibitor fund, 10%.
