One of Those Days!

We had gone to a local livestock auction last year and noticed that the hens, chicks, and other birds were bringing a very high price! We decided to hatch out some extra chicks to sell for some extra money. We had several hatch out and kept them for a couple of weeks until auction day. It finally arrived and we loaded them up in cages and off we went.
We wanted to get there a little early to check them in and we thought it started at 1:00. After handing them over to the people there we looked around and took our seats. 1:00 came and went and finally it started. Someone had brought in a bunch of scrap metal and stuff hoping to make a little bit off of it. They auctioned off every bit of that stuff first, finally got to the birds and rabbits (there were many), and after a couple of hours more, finally got to ours.
We were told that because it was a holiday weekend there weren't near as many people as usual, but there were still lots of people there. We watched animal after animal go through and hardly anyone would bid. They were going for next to nothing. Some weren't bid on at all and some bids were so low that the owners said to forget it, they would just take the animals back home. Jack looked over and told me that if they only went for fifty cents then we would take them back home and wait until later or keep them ourselves.
The auctioneer would start off trying to sell each one at a time, but when noone would bid he would sell everything in the cage together for one price.
Our birds were the very last ones to be auctioned and he started the bidding. We had two cages. The bidding for the first one went up to $3.50. The second one went up to $5.00. We were shocked! Why would they bid so high on ours? We had seen several people looking at them for a while, but when other chicks could hardly be given away, what had made the difference?
I got in line to collect what we had made while Jack waited for the buyers to empty our cages. People had to wait as they figured up what they owed them and then made out their check. I thought to myself, "Too bad they're paying by check when it is a holiday weekend. We'll have to wait and come back into town to cash it." They took my ticket and told me to wait for my check. The lady came back after several minutes and said,"Yours is cash." I'm thinking how amazing that is when I had just had that thought and she handed me the money. A whole $6.00.
Yep, you guessed it. The auctioneer hadn't tried to sell ours by each but only by the whole cagefull.
Twenty-six birds for $6.00.
Back to the drawing board.....
Nancy