Tennessee 4-H and FFA Livestock Sale: Hot Chicken Outbids Actual Chicken
Farm.FM Ranks the Summer’s Ten Most Tennessee Bids, From a Pedal-Wagon Bachelorette Party to a Hot Chicken Joint That Wanted Its Broilers Extra Hot
LEBANON, Tennessee — The Tennessee 4-H and FFA Livestock Sale season has wrapped up for another year, and the Farm.FM livestock desk has done with it what Nashville does with anything that makes money in Tennessee: put it on a chart.
Positions are based on a single measure, the distance between what a buyer paid and what the animal is worth at the local sale barn on a Tuesday, adjusted for enthusiasm and confusion. “Weeks” is how long the buyer stayed before leaving for brunch.
Numbers 10 Through 6: Debuts, Barges and a Lamb Bought Twice
10. Soybean Exporter, Market Hog (Debut. Weeks: 0.) Soybeans are the state’s top commodity and top agricultural export, worth about $1.1 billion, according to Tennessee Farm Bureau. True to form, the exporter won a market hog and immediately asked whether it could go out on a barge from Memphis. Told no, he left. Chart note: soybeans never stay. Every one is a country song about leaving.
9. McMinnville Nursery, Market Lamb (Last: 14. Weeks: 3.) The buyer from the Nursery Capital of the World offered to settle a $2,800 lamb in 400 red maple saplings, balled and burlapped. The committee agreed, provided the lamb was not left alone with the down payment. The lamb was left alone with the down payment. Final settlement: 371 maples and a check.
8. Show Mom, “Setting the Floor,” Her Own Daughter’s Lamb (Last: 8. Weeks: 11.) A returning favorite. Determined that her daughter’s lamb would not sell “below its potential,” a lamb mother bid on it herself, and won. She now owns a lamb she already owned, has paid the sale commission on it, and has been asked to write herself a buyer thank-you note. Her daughter wrote one instead. It began “Dear Buyer” and was, by all accounts, very polite about it.
7. Smoky Mountain Cabin Rental Company, Meat Goat (Debut.) A cabin rental firm bought a goat to add a “rustic goat experience” to its listings, at an $85 nightly goat fee. On its first evening the goat ate the welcome binder, the Wi-Fi password and the laminated hot tub rules. Guests gave the goat two stars. The goat gave the cabin one.
6. Music Row Publishing Company, Market Steer (Last: 22.) A song publisher bid $6,500 on a steer and then sent over a contract claiming 50 percent of the steer’s publishing. The 16-year-old FFA exhibitor read all nine pages at the rail and explained that a steer has no publishing, that the only thing it had ever written was on the floor of the wash rack, and that he was welcome to half of that. The contract was withdrawn. The bid stood.
Numbers 5 Through 2 on the Tennessee 4-H and FFA Livestock Sale Chart
5. Pig-Callin’ Alumni Association, Market Barrow (Last: 1. Weeks: 52.) Last year was the Year of Pork, with a Pig Callin’ Competition and a Great Bacon Toss, according to WSMV’s guide to the 2025 fair. This summer a former contestant entered the bidding by calling instead of nodding. The auctioneer counted 14 bids before realizing they were 14 barrows walking to the front of their pens. The buyer was charged for one.
4. Nashville Bachelorette Party, Boer Goat (Debut. Weeks: 0.04.) Eleven women in matching pink hats pedaled a rented party wagon through the cattle barn, where party wagons are not permitted. They bid $4,100 on a Boer goat because “he looks exactly like Travis,” the groom, and named him Travis. Told Travis could not ride to Lower Broadway, they settled for a group photo and left for brunch. The goat has the photo framed. Chart note: highest enthusiasm per pound of any bidder this season, lowest ability to haul a goat.
3. Timber Company, Commercial Heifer (Up 30.) The 2026 fair was the Year of Forestry, and the state is 52 percent forest, so a timber buyer arrived with momentum and bid in board feet. A 4-H forestry contestant converted for the auctioneer live. The heifer sold for 3,900 board feet of two-by-fours, which the exhibitor’s chapter is using to build a hay shed. Chart note: the only purchase of the summer that came with its own barn.
2. Hot Chicken Restaurant, Pen of Broilers (Up 40, With a Bullet.) A hot chicken restaurant paid $3,000 for a pen of three meat chickens, about $1,000 a bird. Tennessee raises more than 195 million broilers a year. At that price the restaurant would owe the state’s growers $195 billion, a figure its owner said he would “pass along to the customer in the form of a $2 dipping sauce.” He also asked whether the broilers could be shown extra hot. The 14-year-old exhibitor said they were shown at room temperature, as is customary. Chart note: hot chicken outbid actual chicken, and the actual chicken was not consulted.
Number 1: The Steers That Went to Supper
1. Feed Store and Co-op Buying Group, State Beef Expo Steers (New at Number One.) At July’s Tennessee State Beef Expo in Lebanon, 229 heifers and steers were shown, and the top steers were bought and their beef donated to Second Harvest Food Bank. The farm businesses behind the purchase did not ask about publishing, a barge, a nightly goat fee or whether a steer could come to brunch. They asked one question: who is going to eat this?
The desk’s chart model was not built for that question and briefly crashed. Chart note: the first bid of the summer measured in suppers.
Bubbling Under
Just missing the countdown: the Music Row publisher, who returned on the final night and offered to buy the 16-year-old’s handwritten buyer thank-you note “as a lyric.” She declined. She is keeping 100 percent of her publishing.
The show mom from Number 8 is expected back next summer, bidding on her daughter’s breeding heifer. The 2027 Tennessee 4-H and FFA Livestock Sale season runs from the summer junior shows through the state fair in August. The chart resets in Lebanon. Travis the goat is doing well.
Five Humorous Observations About Tennessee 4-H and FFA Livestock Shows
- A Music Row publisher tried to take half a steer’s publishing. The steer’s entire catalog is a wash rack, and he was offered half of it.
- A mother outbid strangers for a lamb she already owned and paid commission on it. That is not setting the floor. That is buying the house you live in at auction.
- A hot chicken place paid $1,000 a bird in a state that raises 195 million broilers a year. Somewhere a grower just sat down on a feed sack.
- Eleven women pedaled a party wagon through a cattle barn to buy a goat that looked like the groom. Frankly, Travis the goat has the better photo.
- The best bid of the summer did not get a photo, a contract or a brunch. It got Second Harvest a freezer full of Tennessee beef, which is a chart-topper in any genre.
Farm Satire Disclaimer
Farm.FM publishes farm satire, and this chart was cooked up for laughs: the buyers, bids and quotes are exaggerated well past Tennessee’s legal limit. The junior shows, the sales and the 4-H and FFA kids are entirely real and deserve a full sale ring. Out here satire is necessary equipment, like a hay spear. When rain, cattle prices, fuel bills and USDA forms all arrive in the same week, the folks at the sale barn and the cafe counter have always laughed first and fixed the fence after. https://farm.fm/?p=42598
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