Lot of state fairs are in August. It would be interesting to know more about some of the different fairs. My understanding is Minnesota state 4-H show is pretty unique. Our fair is still in progress but I'll summarize it briefly.
Located St. Paul MN, it runs 12 days with about 1.8 million visitors. 3 basic livestock periods. First 4 days, 4-H livestock, middle period open class sheep, dairy, swine, last 4 days FFA livestock and open class beef and open class goats.
Rules are much different in the 4-H and FFA shows. 4-H show, kids are allowed to bring only one animal. That animal must have won a trip at the county fair. Trips are allocated primarily through number of members and animals shown. Some bonus "trips" for high quality shows and/or programs. 4-H sheep show has 5 divisions of market lambs, white face, speckle face, light, middle and heavy weight black face lambs. Wether dam ewes are judged by the market lamb judge and showed by weight. Breeding show has primarily registered fitted sheep but we have classes for unregistered white face and black face ewes. Lambs are shown by birth month, yearlings show together. No rams are shown in 4-H. There are about 400 different kids showing lambs in the 4-H. The auction is a 4-H auction and simplistically the top 10% of market animals make it into the auction. Some state money found for champions, most other auction lambs money is raised by the home county. Quality used to drop off quite a bit in the market lamb classes in the bottom 3rd. This year I think all lambs were at least current market lamb style.
FFA show is pretty much a junior open class show. Until last year all sheep had to be registered, kids could have a full string of sheep in yearling, fall, winter, spring classes. They could have 2 sheep in each class. My guess is there are over 600 lambs but I doubt there are more than 100 kid showing. Last year an unregistered wether dam class was started for the first time. This year I think it's the largest class with 70 lambs, (might mean that total number of lambs is now too low). Market classes are the same divisions as 4-H.
