Something to think about, leavening a calf wet in the heat actually makes them hotter unless they are in a cool area with fans to dry them off. From how it was explained to me once the body heat is transferred to the water in the hair the cooling effect is lost. Another reason is leaving wet hair will definitely make it hard to train the hair. True hair is used to hide faults but there are some advantages to having hair, a calf with good trained hair will appear fresher looking, tend to have a younger look than one with out hair. If you are competing in your county fair, just getting hair that pops, has that soft look you are doing great, it wont hide faults but it will make your calf have more eye appeal. We sponsored a young lady last year with a steer, her family runs the last dairy in our county, her steer was in a pen at the dairy. He had shade and that was about it, he had cool box hair, all she did was rinse and blow out every day, genetics did the rest. Like someone posted above, feeding was the key, changing fat and protein at the right time feeding a filler at the end to get his gut to expand, adding extra fat to get a good smooth finish, the timing of when to change an add things is a much bigger part of raising the animal. Truly to me the rinsing and blowing out is more of a training and team building thing for the exhibitor and the animal. We sponsored 2 young men from the local FFA's, neither had ever shown a steer, they did very well for never working with calves prior to this year. Posted a few pictures
