You be the judge

    I have mixed emotions about the show ring and where it fits in with today’s data-driven cattle business. I grew up showing cattle and being on judging teams and I think I learned more in those activities than I ever did in school. Participating in cattle shows builds character and a good work ethic in kids and many use the proceeds from their animals to help finance a college education.
    Big cattle shows like Denver, Houston, Fort Worth, Kansas City, Louisville and San Antonio, help educate the general public and they are a great place for cattlemen to meet and exchange ideas. A lot of business gets done and they bring in lots of tourist dollars. And there still isn’t a better way to evaluate an animal’s structural correctness than to look at it.
    I sat on the auction block as an announcer for a major video company for 20 years and got to see a lot of cattle and I’ll tell you this, the buyers wouldn’t start bidding until they saw the pictures. And I don’t care what you say, a rancher still likes to look at good cattle. I believe it was the Greek scholar Anonymous who said, “The eye of the master still fattens his or her cattle.”
    On the other hand, I am reminded of another old saying also credited to Anonymous, “They stopped judging chickens when they learned how to count eggs.” There are so many other tools we have to evaluate cattle today that are much more accurate and consistent, and I worry that EPDs and DNA data have almost turned cattle shows into their dog show equivalent.
    I also know from having been a judge that judges who pass down their decisions with God-like superiority and impartiality would admit that when it comes to appraising cattle by their phenotype, your guess is often as good as theirs. I also wonder if judges can’t be influenced in subliminal ways. I love the old Jerry Palen cartoon of Elmo with a baseball bat in his back pocket and when the judge passes within earshot he says, “I sure hope the judge likes my kid’s project.”
    I have a friend who is one of the best showmen in the business, and he told me that one year he had two heifers that showed in the same class. Usually the herdsman will show the best one and the judges know this, but in this case the inferior heifer was a little hard to handle so my friend showed it. “And you wouldn’t believe,” he said, “how many times the judges picked the inferior heifer just because I was showing it.”

The full article is available in our e-Edition. Click here to subscribe.