Why Show Cattle?

Today is show day in at Farmfair in Edmonton. Farmfair is the largest cattle show in Alberta, and because it is so close to the farm it is a great show for us to take out cattle into and market them.

I always get asked lots of questions on why we do this and what makes it so much fun, so here is my attempt as answering some of the most common questions I get asked:

Q: What does the judge look for?
A: Because these are breeding animals rather then animals for meat the judge looks for different things. The main things that these animals would be judged on would be how sound they are (what their feet and legs look like), how much muscle they have, and how long and deep they are.

Q: What do you do with them?
A: Cattle shows are very similar to a dog show. We groom and primp the animals before they go into their class. Once their class is called they are paraded in front of a judge to be placed. The judge will evaluate each animal compared to their ideal and place the class from first to last.

Q: What can you win?
A: While we do not show animals to win prizes, there can be some great benefits to doing well. For the grand champions (best overall) belt buckles, cash, gift certificates to industry business and banners are very common. A few shows still pay out prize money in the classes. The two biggest shows to win would be Farmfair and Agribition. Both shows have a supreme show and if you win those (which is very difficult) the prizes are large! For having Supreme champion at Farmfair you win a brand new Dodge Truck! At Agribition to have Supreme Champion you win $10,000 plus about $10,000 in prizes. So yes there can be some incentives to win!

Our Simmental show is today, and we will be showing 5 animals including these two girls! Stay tuned to see how they made out.

Tie Outs Morning and Night

While we are at Farmfair we are lucky enough to be able to tie our animals outside at night. This helps to keep them healthy and it also allows us to remake the stall each night. 

The crew at Northlands takes care of putting down clean straw each day for the animals to lay in at night. We then take hay out for them to eat at night.

Tie-outs during the day

At 6pm each night the barn doors open and cattle start moving outside for the night. It is pretty neat to see 500 head of cattle walking around the horse track towards the tie-outs. 

While the animals are stalled there during the night they have both a halter and a neck tie to secure them in place. A neck tie is an additional rope that goes around there neck and is secured with a ring and clip. The halter is then tied to the left side and the neck robe on the right with the animal in the middle.This keeps them in place and from not getting tangled up with other animals as well as a back up measure encase one of the ropes comes undone during the night.

Tie-outs at night filled with cattle

Making the Bed

At the shows we are not immune from doing chores. The animals need to be fed and watered, the aisles need to be swept, the cattle need to be kept clean, and this all needs to happen while we are talking to potential customers marketing our cattle.

At the end of each day we take out cattle outside to another stall called tie-outs. They spend the overnight there where they have lots of clean bedding and fresh air. After the animals are all lead out to tie-outs there are more chores to be done. We need to prep feed for the next morning and straighten out the stall for the animals to come back the next day.

This is what our stall looked like one day after the animals being in it. There is hay that has been pulled back and not eaten, the shavings are all messy, and the mats that the animals stand on so they do no paw are messed up too.

Once we get all of the night chores done this is how the stall should look. It is all clean and ready for the animals in the morning. This saves us time in the morning and allows us to sleep in those precious few moments.

Farmfair 2011

Farmfair is always a really fun show for us. Not only have we done well at this show, but it is also right in our backyard so it is great to see lots of old friends. We do a lot of business at this show and sell a few animals either out of the stall, or have cattlemen come to the farm to see the bulls we have for sale.

Here are just a few of the pictures from the show this year, and our Reserve National Champion bull RJY Rival 13Y.

RJY First Time 18Y

This weekend we sold yet another bull out of the bull pen. This calf has a pretty neat story, and will have a great future both at High Country and with his new owners BS Ranch.

RJY First Time 18Y is an In Dew Time out of our future donor Joy's First Date 1W.

We were really wanting to use In Dew Time in our herd to get some replacement females. The semen we ordered was sexed female semen 90. This means that the semen will produce 90% heifers and 10% bulls. When AI was done we were to expect 5 calves out of this sire. Once the calves were all born, we were left with 4 heifers and 1 bull! Guess we learned our lesson that you cannot play around with science to much and just have to let mother nature take its course.



Joy's First Date and RJY First Time at Agribition


This fall we took First Time and his mother out on the show road. They placed 2nd in class at the National Show at Farmfair and 4th in class at Agribition. We were then able to connect with BS Ranch who ended up purchasing this bull out of our show string.

RJY First Time 18Y

  

Along with BS Ranch we will be using this new herdsire on our heifers this spring. We are excited to have such a maternal and calving ease sire to implement into our herd and can't wait to see the effect that he will have on our first calf heifers.

We will be selling semen on this young sire this spring. You can contact Rob Young at 780-514-0758 or show12win@yahoo.ca for more information.



Footwear of the Week

This week has been a welcomed change for me. Working downtown there is a certain dress code that comes with the area. That means no jeans or sweats, and we wear suits and heels each day.

With Farmfair in town it meant that I got to trade these Louboutin's....

And these....

  For these....

 And these!

I will gladly made this switch any day, and I think my feed for glad for the change too!

Almost Showtime

This weekend we did the last little bit of prep for our first show of the fall show season. Farmfair is always the kick off to the fall shows, and it happens to be right in our backyard at it is only 1hr away. 

Because it is the first show of the season it seems like it takes a bit more work to get ready for then any of the others. Once the last show is done, everything usually just gets thrown off the truck and trailer as it is -30 outside and we want to get inside and to sleep after a long drive home. It becomes a game of hide and seek when the next year rolls around to find all of the show equipment again.

There are also the tasks like getting stall signs made for each animal, painting all of the steel that we will use, and making sure you have enough halters since dad usually steals some to tie gates with during the year.

Getting everything together

 Aside from gathering all of the equipment, we still need to be working on cattle. This past weekend the temperatures finally plunged some, and so washing cattle in the open was out of the question. We did our best to work their hair and do some clipping to lighten the work load once we get to town.

Dad clipping on First Date

 We also work with the ones that have not been to a show before. Because the animals will be in the city for 5 days, they have to stay tied up the whole time. We try and get them used to be tied up for extended periods of time, teaching them its ok to eat out of a feed tub and a water pail aposed to a water and feed trough.

Rival and Play Date hanging out in the barn

We will see how well we did with the preparations as today Mom and Dad will be taking the cattle into the show. I will join them tomorrow to help out for rest of the week, and "the Eng" will even join us for show day to take part in his first cattle show. Wish us luck and I will try to post some photos and results later this week!

Fall Pictures

Along with the picture of Rival, we also pictured the bred heifer, Prom Date, and the black bull calf, First Time.

We are selling Prom Date in Checkers as a lot where we will sell 2/3 animals offered. She is being offered along with her mother, Dream Date, and her sister Play Date.

The bull calf will be sold either this fall, or in the spring through a sale. We sure like him, and he will be shown with his mother both at Agribition and Farmfair this year.

New Arrivals

This fall we were lucky enough to win a new stock trailer at Farmfair International. Our trailer we had was in good shape and serving us well, but it was pretty cool to win a prize like that.

We finally got the trailer last week after it spent the winter at our friends and bull co-owners Beechinors.

This trailer is a foot wider then the old one, and brand new! It will be nice to be able to pull this down the road over the next few years!

2010 Farmfair Supreme Show

This past Saturday was the Supreme Show at Farmfair International. This show is for all of the breed champions to take part in and compete against one another. The Supreme Champion Bull and Supreme Champion Female each drive away with one of these new 2010 Dodge Trucks! A pretty amazing prize.

There is a panel of 6 judges that are selected to judge the show. They each place the place from top to bottom. The animal who then has the lowest score wins. Sounds easy, but remember these are the best animals from the show so they have their work cut out for them.

This year the Supreme Champion Female went to Rancier Farms with their Simmental Female. They won this honor just 2 years ago, and now have won a total of 3 trucks from the Supreme Show!

The Champion Bull went to Prairie Cove Charolais with their Champion Charolais Bull.

Because our bull won the Simmental show we also go to compete in this. We came close to winning and ended up in 2nd place. I great accomplishment for sure! Another added bonus to the show was a trailer donated by Alan Dale Trailers. This prize went to one of the exhibitors that was competing in the Supreme Show. In the end we ended up winning this new stock trailer! A pretty great prize to win!

2010 Farmfair Simmental Show

The Simmental Show at Farmfair was yesterday. Farmfair is the largest cattle show in Alberta. Although the Simmental numbers were down a little bit this year, the quality was really strong.

Here are some of the champions from the day

 Champion Female- Racier Farms

 Res. Champion Female- Lewis Farms

 Champion Bull- High Country Cattle Services & Beechinor Bros Simmentals

 Res. Champion Bull- Lewis Farms

We had another great show going 2/2 this fall with our bull. This Saturday we will get to compete in the Supreme Show for a chance to win a brand new Dodge Truck!