A group of local 4-H Club members will soon have the chance to show off several weeks of hard work when the Carter County UT Extension Office hosts a special auction next week.

The Carter County 4-H Poultry Show and Sale will take place on Friday, August 10, at noon on the side lawn at the Carter County UT Extension Office, located at 824 E. Elk Avenue.

“We will have approximately 16 pens and lots of four to sell,” said Melissa Shelton, who serves as the 4-H Program Assistant for Carter County.

Local 4-H Club members have raised all of the chickens which will be available for purchase during the auction as part of the club’s Chick Chain program. In the program, the club members are given the responsibility of raising the chicks they receive and preparing them for sale to the public.

The breed which will be auctioned through this event is Black Sex-Link, also known as Black Stars. Sex-links are cross-bred chickens whose color at hatching is differentiated by sex, thus making the process of sorting hens from roosters easier. The chicks available for purchase during the auction will be about 20 weeks old at the time of the sale.

This year marks the first in many that Carter County will host a Chick Chain auction and only the second year in many that local students have participated in the program.

“We started doing it last year for the first time in over two decades,” Shelton said of the Chick Chain. “Last year we partnered with other counties and did a regional show and sale. This year we chose to do solely Carter County and bring it back to our area.”

This year, 18 4-H Club members from the county and city school systems took part in the program and helped raise the chicks that will be put up for auction.

Because the event is an auction, it requires a licensed auctioneer to oversee the sale. “We have a volunteer who has volunteered their services for the auction,” Shelton said.

The chicks will be auctioned off in lots of four chicks to a group to the highest bidder.

“All the money raised goes directly back into the program here in Carter County,” Shelton said. “We use that to build up our livestock program, provide camp scholarships, and anything else 4-H needs.”

The Carter County 4-H Poultry Show and Sale is open to the public who may want to come purchase, or even just watch, the show and auction.

For more information, contact the Carter County UT Extension Office at 423-542-1818.