Russ shows 3 of our Jersey Dairy cows (Daisy, Rosie and Maggie) and this past week was the livestock show for our parish. We had groomed the animals and they seemed to be in pretty good form. Dairy animals show at the same time as the Beef Cattle. Pigs, goats, sheep and chickens had already shown by the time we arrived.
We originally got involved in Dairy because we wanted the benefits of drinking raw milk. We posted about the milking process at Our Maker's Acres Family Farm earlier. If you missed it, check out this link for a step by step process of getting the milk from the udder to our glass:
http://ourmakersacresfamilyfarm.blogspot.com/2012/07/got-milk-we-do.html
Here are a few photos from the show. In the shot below, Russ is exhibiting in the Senior Dairy Showman competition. In this competition, the judge is really not judging the animal, he's judging how well the exhibitor handles his or her animal.
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| Russ with Daisy, his gentle Showmanship cow |
When you show Dairy cows, you want them to be in milk. The judge wants to see the cow's bag in 'bloom,' so what you do is skip one milking to make the udder big and tight. As you can tell, Rosie is uncomfortably full and ready to be milked. She is moo-ing loudly. I don't understand the Jersey cow dialect, but I have a pretty good idea of what she's trying to say.
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| Milk me, please! |
Russ won Champion Senior Showman and also won first in his class with both Rosie and Daisy in the purebred Jersey Division, so he had to show both cows for the Grand Champion in the class. Benjamin showed Daisy, while Russ showed Rosie. It was Benjamin's first time to show and I think he did a fantastic job.
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| Benjamin and Russ with Daisy and Rosie |
Below is a picture of the entire class of showmen in the Jersey Grand Champion determination.
Magnolia won Reserve champion in the Jersey heifer division. She's a nice looking calf, but the judge said that she was 'over-conditioned.' That is a nice way of saying she's too fat. I've got to take the blame for this. I was always raised around beef cattle. When you see ribs or bones on beef cattle, it's not good. Not so, for dairy animals. You want all energy to go toward milk production, not putting meat on their frame. It is hard for me to see ribs and not want to give them more hay!
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| Russ and Magnolia |
Russ won champion in his class with Rosie. She is a nice looking milk cow.
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| Russ & Rosie |
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| Russ and Rosie, Grand Champion Jersey Cow! |
The Parish Livestock Show was over and we loaded the girls back on the trailer to bring them home. I think they were happy to be heading back to the familiarity of home.
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| Are we there yet? |
We laid Russ' ribbons all out on the table to view his awards. Very nice!
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| Russ' stash |
On Saturday morning, there was an awards banquet in which he picked up his additional awards - a nice plaque for winning Grand Champion Jersey Cow (Rosie) and a humungous belt buckle for winning Champion Senior Dairy Showman with Daisy.
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| Awards |
Here is a zoomed in shot of Russ' belt buckle. It has lots of detail on it and it is as big as the hubcaps on a '56 Buick!!!
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| Bigger than a hubcap on a '56 Buick! |
Next week is the District Livestock Show in Lake Charles. We'll do the same thing there, only the district show has livestock from a number of different parishes participating. We will pull out the clippers again and give them another touch-up shave prior to the District Show.
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