At Yoder auction, more than words are flying

The Yoder Poultry Auction is heard long before it’s seen.

A cornucopia of sound blasts the senses – roosters crowing, ducks quacking, chicks cheeping, pigs squealing and two auctioneer’s voices yowling above it all.

And then there is the kaleidoscope of sights – a couple hundred pickups, John Deere tractors and Amish buggies line the blacktop. Men in straw hats and gray beards walk to the auction with plain-capped women; barefooted blue-jeaned boys run to keep up.

Step onto David Keim’s property and there are rows and rows of chickens, ducks, guineas, peacocks, turkeys, rabbits, pigs and dogs.

It’s Noah’s Ark – for sale.

On the last Friday of each month, Keim hosts a poultry auction – an attraction that has grown to be one of the largest of its kind in Kansas.

The auction typically attracts backyard chicken enthusiasts, Amish families, bargain hunters, curiosity seekers and people wanting to buy their food in its most natural, unprocessed form.

The fowl are carried in a variety of devices, from cat carriers to cardboard boxes, wire cages and laundry baskets with fencing on top.

The nature of business

Many find out about the auction by word of mouth.

“I have people coming from Oklahoma City, Wichita, Missouri, Scott City – all over,” Keim said. “I don’t advertise. I don’t need to.”

Polo shirts mix with camo wearers, as bidders weave in and out of auctioneer rings. Some families come with dinner in mind, looking to make a rooster, pig or rabbit purchase.

Some come to rid themselves of animals no longer wanted or needed.

Norm Cooper of St. John arrived early at the auction at 1:30 p.m. last Friday – 3 1/2 hours before it was scheduled to start. He had seven Banty chickens to sell – five roosters and two hens. He was the 29th person to register.

“I don’t want them anymore,” he said.

The future owners, he said, would probably take them home and maybe make pets out of them.

“Banties will eat bugs,” he said. “Good for the garden.”

The chickens went for $3 each.

In the past, he said, he has had pullets ready to start laying eggs sell for as much as $25.

Fleshy, big roosters can sell for as high as $9 to $10 apiece.

Kenneth Thieme of Zenda arrived at the auction because, he said, he was an animal guy.

“I raise all these animals,” he said. “I probably got 250 animals at Zenda.”

On Friday he was selling some guineas, ducks, turkeys and geese.

“Why come to this auction?” he said. “It’s the only one that’s close. It’s a community deal, everybody is real friendly.”

And, as Cooper said, “You never know what they will have from one sale to another.”

The auctioneer

To hear an auctioneer is to listen to another language. Microphone in hand, words sometimes come faster than human ears can comprehend.

Keim said he is a self-taught auctioneer.

“I’ve sold donkeys and emu, ostriches and a buggy and horse,” he said.

As an Amish boy, he grew up fascinated by auctions.

“Here’s two and a half, here, 12 chicks, here, here, here, 2.50, dollar, and now four, four, four and now five, five, five, six dollar, 7.50? Seven? Seven? Seven? Sold them $6.50,” Virgil Yoder chanted on Friday.

His boss, Keim, worked as a day laborer until he started with Kingman auctioneer Larry Giefer at farm sales. Giefer, who died in 2011, was an auctioneer for more than half a century.

“I casually asked him if he ever needed help, I’d be willing to learn,” Keim said. “He said, ‘Come on board, and I’ll teach you.’

“I started on farm sales. I never went to school for it.”

By 1998, Keim was one of Giefer’s main auctioneers.

Not long after, Keim started his own poultry auction. The sale has turned into “anything that walks.”

Keim started the auction, he told The Eagle in 2011, because some of the local Amish farm families didn’t like their children coming home late at night from a similar auction in South Hutchinson.

And so, beginning at 4 p.m. on the final Friday of each month, he holds an auction near downtown Yoder. With two auctioneers singing, the auction usually concludes by 7:30 or 8 p.m.

It has become so popular, Keim said he’s thinking about holding it twice a month. And, later this year, he plans to construct a building to house the auction indoors instead of having the animals and people outside in the elements.

Bird flu scare

The sale has been a success except for a six-month hiatus last year when the fear of avian flu shut down all poultry events in the state.

The Kansas Department of Agriculture issued a stop movement order in June 2015 regarding all poultry events where birds are brought together. That meant all poultry events – competitions at county fairs, the Kansas State Fair, festivals, swap meets, exotic bird sales and auctions – were banned until Dec. 31.

It was a dark time, said Thieme, from Zenda.

“Everybody had to keep what they had and eat what they had,” he said.

On Jan. 1, Keim held his first auction after the ban.

The auction

People of all faiths and walks of life come to buy and trade.

In one cage is a dog hunkered down as people gather around it.

“This is a registered miniature Australian Shepherd,” Keim said. “It was born March 5. You will sell the breeding rights and papers, if they want it?”

The seller – a middle aged man in a polo shirt – nods.

“OK, there he is. Let’s jump in $20? 30? $25? Ten dollars. Ten?” As a woman in the crowd nods. “Now 15? 17? 17 and a half. Now, Now 22 and a half. Now 25 dollars. Now, Now. Sold $22.50. Your number is 144,” Keim said.

Down the row, there is a litter of mixed-breed pups for sale. Keim said the litter belongs to his daughter.

It’s not often, Keim said, that dogs are sold.

“Most of the time it is people’s farm dogs who have a litter of pups and people want to get rid of them rather than dispose of them in an inhumane way,” he said. “So they sell them.”

The things that sell aren’t always animals. It is true about the old saying – one man’s junk is another man’s treasure.

Friday’s sale had a collection of fence posts, wire, a well-used digital DVD player, a utility wire spool, a child’s plastic safety seat, a table light and other odds and ends.

The items, Keim said, are auctioned off after the animals have all been sold.

Not far from the poultry auction, Amish and Mennonite women have set up a farmer’s market where tomatoes and other garden vegetables are sold as well as homemade canned and baked items.

Howard Burkholder lives two houses down from the Yoder Poultry Auction.

“I think it is the most phenomenal thing for this many people to come here for something like this,” Burkholder said. “It’s all different kinds of animals, they’ve got tomatoes, garden stuff, everything.”

This story was originally published August 3, 2016 at 8:53 AM with the headline "At Yoder auction, more than words are flying."