| Raising a show calf takes considerable time and money |
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| Written by Administrator |
| Friday, 12 March 2010 20:54 |
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By Weston Bates Hugo High School Student Reporter Every year all over America, students will buy a show animal that they will be able to demonstrate for their local FFA or 4-H. When you show animals, you can either raise your own or buy one from somebody that raises them to sell. I will focus on the cost of a show calf and what you have to do to keep it healthy and ready to show. There is never really a break between the show seasons, as soon as you get through showing one animal, you have to have one that you raised ready or go shopping for one. Here in Oklahoma there are many people who raise certain breeds of show calves. Also, there are sales and auctions set up especially for selling show calves to people looking. Whenever you go to one of these sales you will have a wide variety of breeds of calves, but this also means that there will be some very good calves there that will cost a lot more than some of the others there. However, if you do not have the money to buy a $5,000 calf, there are calves out there that haven’t been discovered by anyone yet and will sometimes be very cheap. As you are reading this, you are probably asking yourself how much it costs to be involved in showing calves. A good show calf around here may cost $3,000 but I have won grand champion with a calf that I bought for $900, and of course there are calves out there that will cost $15,000 but this will enable you to win a lot more shows than just your county show. Once you have bought the calf you like, you will need to set up shelter for it and feed and water it every day. Although this may sound simple and easy, it actually is very complicated at times. There are certain types of show feeds that you can feed your calf, but, like most calves, the better they are the more they cost. This also applies to the feed. If you show a steer, there is a starter and finisher feed, a starter feed is a feed that keeps them healthy and helps them gain weight. A finisher feed is a feed that puts fat on the ribs of the steer. If you show a heifer, you have beet pulp to put in your feed, which you can wet down and it will fill them up better. Also, if you would like to do well with your calf, you should feed, water and exercise it everyday. To exercise it, you can walk it around the pin you have it in. However this is not the only thing you have to do, you need to wash it and blow dry it. You can buy blowdryers that are specially designed for show calves. You do this because it helps keep the hair trained to stand up and easier to clip. You can watch some of the local shows around Hugo to see if you would like to compete. |
