The arenas were empty. The midway ride's lights were on, but there weren’t any riders. As most attendees left for the night, trucks and trailers rolled up to the grounds. Even when the Fort Worth Stock Show and Rodeo’s event schedule is blank, the grind to earn a blue ribbon doesn’t stop.
Trailers full of cattle entered the stock show grounds bright and early. Behind the cattle buildings, exhibitors and their families prepped their cattle for upcoming contests.
The Junior Beef Heifer Competition was beginning to creep up on contestants, and with the clock ticking down, it was crunch time for making their final preparations the night before the competition. Kids in overalls and cowboy boots walked their restless cattle while others shoveled hay and patted down dirt with shovels for their animals.
FWSSR communications director Matt Brockman said youth exhibitors came from 239 of Texas’ 254 counties.
“Some of them are coming hundreds and hundreds of miles,” Brockman said. “And when they do, it’s not like you’re taking a trip with your pet dog or cat.”
The participants travel in trucks with trailers between 14 and 30 feet, long carrying their animals. A single trailer can hold up to five steers or heifers, Brockman said.
“When you take that into consideration, we’ll have more than 2,000 heifers, for example, that will unload here for our Junior Beef Heifer Show,” he said.
Gladewater, Texas, residents Mike and Allison Byers watched proudly as their daughter, Maddie, washed and cleaned one of the family’s Hereford calfs. As a senior, this would be Maddie’s last time in the junior heifer competition. In the Byers family, participating in the stock show is part of who they are.
“[Mike Byers] showed cattle when he was in school,” Allison Byers said. “I did too, so it’s just a generational thing for us.”
Allison Byers said preparing for the junior heifer competition isn’t a one-and-done task.
“It doesn’t matter if it’s an ice storm outside and everybody else is shut in. There’s feeding, there’s hay, there’s taking care of them,” she said. “It’s not just, ‘Oh, she gets here and she looks like that.’ No, it’s an everyday occurrence.”
Leading up to the event, the stock show communicates with the youth exhibitors’ adult leaders ahead of their family’s competition, allowing each family a space for staging.
Brockman said that depending on when the trucks and trailers arrive, participants can wait from a few hours up to 24 hours until it is their turn to show off their animals.
“They know in advance that they’re going to be staged and waiting that long, and so they bring with them what’s needed to keep the animal comfortable and cared for while they wait in those trailers,” he said.
Once the animals are unloaded, they are given two stalls: an inside cattle barn and an outside space called a tie-out. Generally during the day, exhibitors will keep the cattle inside so that they can groom it and prepare it for competition. Once the day is done, the cattle will be kept in their tie-out space bedded with straw and hay.
“She’s kind of like a big baby, she’s used to this,” Allison Byers said about their Hereford. “She’s got a big barn at home that she stays in, so she sleeps in shavings just like here. We try to make them as comfortable as possible.”
On the night before the Junior Beef Heifer Competition, there was a mixture of cattle filling their stalls indoors and outdoors, with more groups getting settled. What looked like chaos was in reality a symphony of great proportions.
The competitors from near and far worked well into the night. The show arena was empty, but the work didn’t stop. In the morning it would be more of the same until finally, one junior would earn a blue ribbon.
“Those kids, they’re what make this show. The work they put in and the effort, that’s what makes the show what it is,” Allison Byers said.
@wall035203 @PMalkomes
