Show Beef Fitting 101

A Moo Cow Pageantry Prep Informational Session

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Bubba Gump is such a good boy!

Like many of you, I have some responsibilities in life that happened upon me in the voluntold way. One of those responsibilities is that of a 4-H Market Beef leader. What qualifications do I have to lead youth in the showing of market steers? Absolutely none.

What I do have is a bit of experience with bovines (my grandfather had 100 of them), and as a librarian, I do tend to have a rather large knowledge pool to draw from and a willingness to learn new things. I am also a sucker. Last fall at the fair a bunch of teenagers cornered me in my travel trailer and begged me to be their beef leader. And here I am.

That said, part of doing a 4-H project is completing some form of presentation regarding your project. This presentation can be an illustrated talk, a speech, or a demonstration. Each kid that does a 4-H project has to complete this requirement, and last night at our monthly meeting the last four of my beeflings that had yet to do their demos presented them to the rest of our group.

We were instructed on different types of injections and how to administer them, what bloat is, and what makes an animal a ruminant. By far the most interesting/peculiar demo of the night was how to get a steer properly fitted for show.

As I intimated before, I had absolutely no idea what it took to get a steer ready grooming wise for the show ring. The only experience I have had was bathing, clipping, and blow drying my friend's kid's steer last year before fair. Little did I know that there was a lot more too it, why, they even have colored spray paint to help even out your steer's coat color.

For the next half an hour I stood at our friend's house and watched all manner of show steer fitting tricks, from the backcombing of the bottom off the steer's tail to the applying of adhesive to tailbone hair to make it stand up just right. There is special spray to set hair, special coating to paint hooves, and special spray to remove all the coatings that make your steer look pretty so their hair doesn't fall out from all the accoutrements that you use to floof them up for the ring.

The whole process floored me! Every time you see a kid lead an animal into the show ring, that kid has spent at least an hour or two prepping that animal for the judge's discerning eye. That's not to mention all of the countless hours feeding, spending time with, and training the animal to show. Kids that take the time to show animals amaze me with their level of dedication. Sure, at the end of the project there is a payday for most of the kids, but the race leading up to that economic finish line is laden with all manner of the unknown and repetitive tasks galore.

cow cosmetics

So you see, it really isn't an inconvenience to put the time in and try to be a good leader for these kids, because I feel like it's a privilege to be there and facilitate a part of the educational path for such amazing youth, and I am honored to help them along in their journey. They are truly awesome!

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And as always, all of the images in this post were taken on the author's bovine slimed iPhone.

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