Lessons Learned

[txffamom]

While I'm sure most everyone here has lots of experience, we are new to showing cattle and I thought I'd share a few lessons learned for some of the other newbies. My daughter's first calf show was yesterday at the Fort Bend County Fair and Rodeo. It was great fun and we both learned alot.

1. Always keep your eyes on the judge.
The Story: In Ring A, there was a very unruly calf with 2 ropes and 2 ppl showing her. With all the commotion, and my daughter trying to calm her own calf, she missed the judge calling her up for 3rd, so he placed her calf 4th of 5. No matter what is going on around you, look at the judge.

2. Don't wash too early. Not knowing how fast or slow things would go, we washed too early. She was ready to lie down for a bit, but was already clean, so she had to stand. This upset her and she was a bit jumpy when it came time to go the ring.

3. If there is more than one ring, be sure of the line-up location for all rings following the first. My daughter thought she was in the right place, and as it turned out, they had to call her to the 2nd ring. She was close by, but it upset her that they had to call her. Therefore, she was upset when she walked into Ring B.

4. Always thank the judge and shake his/her hand before leaving the ring. My daughter has always done this (even when showing goats), but I saw ALOT of kids walk right past the judge while exiting the ring without even looking at the judge. And he was standing right there to shake their hands.

5. Do some smaller shows before you jump into the majors. This is something we knew and why we did this one. Even if you can't participate, go to some of the smaller shows and watch and learn. It doesn't take long to figure out who has been doing this for a while and ALOT can be learned from them.

All in all, it was alot of fun and we look forward to the next one.

 

[sim.-ang.king]

That's whats it's about always learning always improving, and working harder to do better. Glad you had fun and learned sometimes getting to the ring is the hardest part :lol2: :nod: :bang:

 

[VCC]

It is OK to wash them early just make sure they have good clean bedding to put them back in. Our show day routine went something like this:
Arrive at 5:00 am
Pick-up after calves
5:15Wash calves (while calves are in the wash rack someone else cleans out stalls and puts a fresh layer down of clean shavings and packs them.
5:45 Blow out calves completely
6:30 Feed and water calves
7:00 Walk calves
7:20 tie calves with their heads up
8:00 tie calves down and feed hay
1.5 hour prior to class get calves up tie heads up and blow out
1.25 hour prior to class start fitting calves

1st call, pull calf from chute and water

2nd call, start for ring.

If your bedding is clean, the calves are completely dry and you stay on top of them (pick up the phone calls as soon as they ring) the calves will stay clean. Nothing worse than a calf that has been up on his/her feet all day, they either fight you the whole time or lie down in the ring.

At our county fair you can only wash from 6 - 8 in the morning calves do not show until the afternoon. Clean shavings, a blower and fogger can do miracles for you.

I will add that their is nothing worse than getting your calf done early and then around 10:00 some one comes in and start blowing water and shavings all over all the other calves that are clean and ready to go.

Here is one for you, always make sure the blower is off before plugging in, if not it makes one heck of a mess in a hurry (learned that one the hard way) can upset people in a hurry.

 

[Chris H]

Ditto on what vcc said about washing. A handy thing is alcohol in a spray bottle to blow in when fitting. It helps lift & fluff hair that might be flattened by laying/sweating. (It also helps straighten curly Hereford hair!)