For months, families across the country have spent extra hours in the barn listing to the drone of fans and blaring radios to get ready for Junior Nationals, state and regional jackpots and county fairs. There are few activities capable of strengthening family bonds like blazing summer temperatures, loading the trailer and uncooperative cattle. Some might suggest taking sale pictures or processing cattle at Thanksgiving are comparable family bonding events, but I digress.
A good friend of mine used to say, “Cattle shows are as relevant to the beef industry as a tractor pull is to the crop farmer.” From a practical perspective, I suppose he isn’t wrong, but I’d argue cattle shows play an important role in exposing the next generation to the beef industry. Everyone needs a hobby and there are far worse options than spending summers as a family feeding and training show cattle.
Caring for livestock regardless of species and scale should be celebrated in an age where fewer people are involved in food and fiber production every day. My only regret as a youth was my poor understanding of the return on invested capital and labor and, as a result, never showing meat chickens. My youth livestock experience was rooted in maximizing gross revenue without regard to the time and labor investment of market steers.
Showing cattle offers young people an opportunity to hone their stockmanship skills. Training a show heifer to walk past a stroller, over a storm grate or next to a photo backdrop requires a keen understanding of animal behavior that one day may help solve the challenge of loading feedlot cattle when the sun causes cattle to balk. Skills gained by adjusting rations and filtering water to minimize the transportation stress of a new environment will pay dividends when getting ready to receive those bawling calves this fall.
One aspect of livestock shows we celebrate and curse at the same time is the subjective evaluation by judges. I’d suggest exhibitor satisfaction follows a normal distribution: a few exhibitors are happy with the outcome, the majority enjoy the experience of showing cattle and meeting friends, while a few are unhappy or disappointed. While the unhappy are relatively few, the number who completely agree with the judge’s assessment of their livestock is likely skewed away from normal.
Subjective evaluation by judges will be debated for as long as there are spectators at livestock shows. A judge’s preference in trait prioritization is something most ringside spectators will agree to disagree with. Structural soundness in market animals is a classic example¬—just how sound does a market steer need to be once he reaches market weight? Breeders and feeders have different standards for structural correctness in market cattle.
The ability of a judge to subjectively determine their priority traits and repeat those assessments throughout the day are where most evaluators get in trouble with the crowd. Judging and sorting the cattle knowing the crowd is evaluating you is why judging requires a lot of confidence and thick skin. After the 25th class of Angus heifers, even the best evaluator may struggle to be consistent the entire day.
One common refrain a judge uses to escape criticism is “This is one person’s opinion on one day.” From a visual evaluation perspective, the present-day reference is fair, but really how many cattle do we truly want to sort only on one given day? Back to the market steer example, if the evaluation is a focused on one day and he can walk on a truck that steer is structurally sound enough.
Judges and spectators alike can quickly sort off the bottom few cattle they don’t like. We all tend to spend more time in the middle and top of the “class” because the trait differences get smaller, and the tradeoffs get harder to prioritize. Now imagine the decision to place a heifer 6th or 7th meant keeping one in the herd for 10 years and sending the other to the feedyard. Not an imaginary scenario, one many of you will make when sorting replacements to keep this fall.
When you think about the development expense and deferred revenue associated with your keep/cull decisions it’s time to diversify your replacement female selection methods beyond a subjective evaluation. Consider incorporating an objective genomic test to help allow you to look at a heifer’s future potential productivity, evaluate multiple traits, and rank those traits against other cattle in your herd. Even tractor pulls use objective distance and weight measurements.
