Fair Enough
As spring turns into summer, 4-H'ers should be working with their dairy feeder calves, or other beef animals, to get them used to a halter. Dairy feeder calves right now weigh around 200 pounds, just heavy enough to make for a good tug-of-war. But as the weather warms up and the days grow longer, those calves will start adding weight. By fair time, those calves will weigh about 500 pounds.
When you work with a calf every day, it's easy to overlook their growth. At 1.5 pounds of gain per day, a dairy feeder calf may gain 10 or more pounds a week. If you feed him well, the calf might gain 2 pounds per day, increasing the pounds even more. A good 4-H'er will figure out how to build weight and muscle while also training their animal to lead.
Kirk Cousins, an NFLquarterback since 2012, once described the sacrifice needed to reach the next level. "Champions are built on a thousand invisible mornings," he said. The same principle applies to showing 4-H livestock. Working with your animal—whether it be a pig, beef steer, goat, sheep or dairy feeder calf—requires daily sacrifice. Four-H'ers who walk with their animals every day will go farther than those who do it only occasionally.
Animals love routines, but they rely on humans to show them the way. They need a human to put on the halter, open the gate of their pen and lead them through the pasture or whatever is available. By the time fair weeks rolls around, a human-animal bond will develop. Like the weight the animal has gradually added without notice over the weeks, that bond develops between the calf and its owner.
Growing up on the farm, one of my earliest jobs was to fetch the milk cows in the back pasture. I had to walk back a long lane to reach the green grass, but I never had to walk the full distance. When the cows saw me coming, they started meandering my way. They looked forward to the routine of eating and being milked twice a day.
Like those milk cows, a 4-H steer or calf will look forward to being washed and groomed. The 4-H animal will take note of your presence as you enter the barn and will think happy thoughts as you prepare to walk it. The steer knows that exercise is always followed by a thorough washing and grooming, then feeding time.
Such a routine requires sacrifice on the part of the 4-H'er, but I have been on enough 4-H tours to know there are young people willing to do it. In the end, they reap the rewards of their hard work. The next year, they begin again with a new animal.
If you haven't yet started a routine, it's not too late to begin.