Kids and showing

[cowgirl8]

It use to consume our free time and money. Now, all i have is pictures and relatives of show heifers of yesteryear...
If your kids showed years ago or you did. I'd love to see your pictures...
Daughter #2 with her SCC heifer Dar. We kept a bull out of Dar and most of the red cows we have today are out of her bull Toad..

 

[cowgirl8]

Here's Dar at Ft Worth, she won her class with Toad at her side. I missed this show, i was at a diving meet with non-cow daughter.

 

[Bigfoot]

I showed steers coming up. Lost all my pictures. Deal was I bought the steers, my dad bought the feed, and the money went for college. I showed 3 every year. Great memories from those days. It started getting crazy towards the end, with people putting too much money in a steer. My dad was a buyer, and I'd watch the groups for a steer or two that fit the bill. I would usually show one off of one of my cows as well.

 

[SPH]

Showing used to be our family "vacation" growing up. We'd show at our state junior breed show, county fair, breed junior national, and state fair 4-H and open shows and if we had a good heifer we'd show at Ak-Sar-Ben and once at the Kansas City Royal and occasionally another show in the state or FFA show since you couldn't show the same heifer both for 4-H and FFA. Here's one of me nearly 20 years ago at the American Royal in Kansas city. Three generations in this photo, the heifer was raised by my grandparents and the national Polled Hereford queen at the time just happened to be the daughter of a family friend too. This picture was after winning senior division heifer champion. One proud grandpa, he traveled to multiple shows that year, my brother also showed another heifer he raised that year too but he always wanted to let his grandsons show something he raised so this heifer in particular he was pretty proud of. Unfortunately ran into some bad luck with her as a cow, she had a stillborn calf then had a heifer calf born in a blizzard that lost most of her ears but was a very good cow for us for many years including having a bull we kept and used and either kept or sold her daughters. Had to send her to the sale barn after she had complications trying to calve the 3rd time and prolapsed but the 1 daughter we were able to get out of her at least gave us something.

Probably the proudest moment as a family showing was my brother and I taking Supreme and Reserve Supreme female at our state junior breed show 1 year. The judge didn't know we were brothers and was even more impressed when he found out that my brother's Supreme champion he picked was bred and owned and mine was raised by our family too when a lot of times these heifers winning shows someone went out and spend big money on.

 

[cowgirl8]

SPH, do you have any now you can trace back to her? She's beautiful. We had a neighbor who showed poll herefords and when we got into commercial heifers, he did too.....AGH....he was good and i hated seeing him pull up to a show..lol I was quite the calf show mom..He won every poll hereford division and usually took grand overall.

 

[TN Cattle Man]

I never had the opportunity to show any cattle growing up. We were always a commercial operation and dad was never big on what he called "Over-priced, over-fed" cattle... :lol: We were stuck showing hogs!!

With that said, now that I have Grandchildren (albeit they are only 1 years old), I would love to see them get interested in showing cattle one of these days. I am looking forward to getting involved with them and having a blast!! My children look back and wondered why they never had any interest in showing cattle... too busy in sports I guess. We have had some heifers that we raised that were sold to people who showed them in junior livestock events and were quite successful!

Who knows what the future will bring!!

 

[SPH]

SPH, do you have any now you can trace back to her? She's beautiful. We had a neighbor who showed poll herefords and when we got into commercial heifers, he did too.....AGH....he was good and i hated seeing him pull up to a show..lol I was quite the calf show mom..He won every poll hereford division and usually took grand overall.

Thanks, she was a very good looking heifer. Wish we could have got more progeny out of her, one of the breeders at our state fair that year really wanted to buy her and wish I had at least asked what he would have paid me but at the time lot of sentimental value because she was my grandpa's heifer he had picked out just for me. We have one 12 year old cow in the herd right now that I can trace back to the bull we kept out of her daughter. Will try to see if I can try to find some pictures to post later of the bull and the cow we have out of him. He was pretty good looking too, dark with the red eye but her daughter ironically was more of a yellow heifer without any eye pigment.

 

[SPH]

OK, found some pictures for you cowgirl8...

This is the only daughter we got out of her. We got 7 calves from her with average weaning ratio of 110 which is very good. Like I mentioned, she was born in a blizzard so that is why she doesn't have much for ears but she sure was one of our best cows in her prime.

This is one of the calves out of the cow above which we kept and used as a herd bull for a few years

And this is the cow we have still in herd sired by the bull above. This picture is a few years old but even for a 12 year old cow today she still looks about the same

 

[cowgirl8]

Nice.....when i look out at our herds i love seeing reminders of our showing days. I miss seeing my kids out messing with their heifers, the smell of the show barns and how it feels watching a judge looking at your kids. Maybe my grandkids will show, that will be something to look forward to.

 

[I luv herfrds]

Here is my daughter with her first 4-H steer, Pot Roast.

 

[branguscowgirl]

TN I too can't wait to see if my grand children will be interested in showing cattle! Mine are 5 and 2 years old. They do get to come to the State Fair every year and watch the show and see the different animals. They love it! Only time will tell if they decide that the work is fun also.

It is getting to the point for me, that if I do not get some young ones interested, I don't know how much longer I can keep it up on my own. ;-)

 

[cowgirl8]

TN I too can't wait to see if my grand children will be interested in showing cattle! Mine are 5 and 2 years old. They do get to come to the State Fair every year and watch the show and see the different animals. They love it! Only time will tell if they decide that the work is fun also.

It is getting to the point for me, that if I do not get some young ones interested, I don't know how much longer I can keep it up on my own. ;-)

Hum, grandkids and getting back into showing....Hadnt thought of that. My oldest daughter, the one who just had a baby, is a ag teacher. Chances are, she'll show...lol...But, this time i'll probably just go watch, maybe help fund. If she shows commercial, she'll get pick of the herd. Sometimes we have show quality steers, thats what i'd love to see someone show. We've been thinking that someday we'd love to take a pen of heifers to Ft Worth..You just have to be organized and remember when signup is..

 

[TexasBred]

Good looking cattle SPH and a good udder on that lady. Hard to find them in many herefords. Good job.

 

[SPH]

Good looking cattle SPH and a good udder on that lady. Hard to find them in many herefords. Good job.

Thanks, those are older pictures too. The last cow is the only one of those still on the farm and that picture is probably 2-3 years old. I posted some photos from this spring here: viewtopic.php?f=5&t=91945 We're pretty selective about trying to have a herd of females that have good milk and growth traits while maintaining good calving ease. We're at a point we've been selling a lot of our heifer calves the past few years that we'd normally keep for ourselves because we have such a solid base of females right now that we can't keep as many replacements as we used to. Probably won't be the case this year, we're really bull heavy with calves this year, 2:1 ratio so probably have a few disappointed customers that have come back each fall to buy some more heifers.

Received this photo the other day from a young man we are proud of. We had a calf (the cow in this picture) we had to pull off an older cow not long after birth and we really don't like to mess with bottle calves but liked this heifer calf so we came across this kid in FFA who was looking for a bottle calf project and let him "borrow" her for the summer and return her to us in the fall when he was done. The next summer he approached us about wanting to show her as a yearling so we turned her out with the bull a little early and made sure she was bred before he took her for the summer. Brought her back again in the fall and we got a nice heifer calf out of her. We needed to reduce herd inventory the following year and he had inquired about buying her so not only did he buy her but bought her heifer calf as well so the next year he had both a cow calf and yearling heifer project to show. Since then he came back last fall and bought another heifer calf so he has the start to a nice little herd with 2 calved this year plus a yearling heifer. This cow had a bull calf last year that his neighbor decided to buy, this calf pictured is a AI bull calf by Revolution 4R that looks pretty nice so hopefully he can find someone who does fall breeding to buy it next year too. This young man just loves his cattle, his mom said last year he wanted to miss his sister's graduation because this cow was due to calve any day and he wanted to stay home in case she did and what would you know he rushed home from graduation that day and found her with a calf so he had a good hunch!