Livestock Showing | Teen Ink

Livestock Showing

August 30, 2016
By Tristen_walling BRONZE, Lakeland, Florida
Tristen_walling BRONZE, Lakeland, Florida
2 articles 0 photos 0 comments

The sound of cows mooing, the smell of show sheen, watching the cows go round and round in the show ring, tasting the sweet victory when you win grade champion, and hands covered in black spray paint these are all things that lure me into showing every weekend. I started showing rabbits when I was 5 years old; I got 8 rabbits for Christmas and showed all 8 at our county fair and our sate fair. I showed rabbits till I was in fourth grade; at 8 years old I started showing hogs.  I got my first hog in September I named her Nelle Bell, she was one of the best hogs I have ever had. She was so sweet; she and I built a bond that you could not break she knew my voice and every afternoon when I would call her name from the house and she would meet me at the gate. That January I showed her and won 3rd over all in the show and sold her two days after the show, I didn’t want to sell her because I would miss her. Each year after that year I kept getting hog to show and every year I would cry my eyes out when I sold my hogs because I would build a bound with each of them and I would have to break that over a long period of time.  Building a bond with my animals was easy, I named all my animals: Nelle Bell, Hammy, Vegas, Casha, Pigsley, little bit, and Izzy naming my hogs made it seem like they were more like pets than market animals that I had to show and sell at the beginning at the new year. In middle school I started showing heifers and hogs, I got my first heifer Moly in sixth grade; she was one of the sweetest heifers I have ever had. Molly was a most gentle cow who did every thing right from right when she walked into the ring to when she left the ring. She had her first bull Mighty Tom, he is named after my grandpa who was very sick at the time he was born; Mighty Tom was a strong powerful bull who weighed a whopping 91 pounds when he was born. I showed Molly for the last time at out county fair when she turned two years old; I got a new cow, Tipsy, after I couldn’t show Molly anymore. I named my next cow Tipsy because if you look at her she looks like she is drunk because of her markings on her face. I took Tipsy to 20 shows the first year I got her, she won 18 shows out of the 20 we went to which is hard to do. We bred her to the best bull we could find; nine months later she had her calf still born. I still have Tipsy and she is bred again and has a ton more shows to do this year before I have to replace her with a new one.



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