justintime said:
This is an issue that has bugged me , as well as many others for many years. It reminds me of a policy several years ago when one of the biggest bull buyers in Canada, PFRA, sent out a statement in which they expressed their concern over the condition of the bulls they were buying. They said that they would not be bidding on bulls that were considered to be carrying too much fat.Since they usually buy several hundred bulls a year at very good prices, several leading breeders cut the feed back on their bulls. It was very obvious that they forgot to tell the guys they sent out to buy the bulls as they only both the fatter bulls even after claiming that they weren't going to bid on them. As a result, most buy producers went back to feeding they way they used too.
It used to be that Americans who came to Canadian shows, told us that we had our show cattle too fat. That has changed in the past few years as the American shows I go too, have show cattle that are beyond being just fat... they are obese.
Here in Canada, we also show two year old females with a calf at foot as well as mature cows with a calf at foot. Several years ago, I had a conversation over breakfast with Louis Latimer of Remitall who said that the Polled Herefords were going overboard on conditioning... especially on their heifer calves. There were almost 300 Polled Herfs at Canadian Western Agribition that year and Louis wanted to bet me $1000 that no Polled Hereford heifer that was shown at Agribition that year would return as a two year old with a calf at foot. I didn't want to bet as I thought he was probably right. Two years later he told me that he had kept track and not one of the near 300 heifers had returned to show as a two year old.
My grandfather used to say that there oftentimes is a big difference between showing breeding stock and breeding show stock. Sounds to me that we may be seeing this regularly today. There are a lot of hot dog heifers that are never heard of again once their show careers are over, unless they are flushed and another cow that CAN milk raises the calf.
Saved me some typing, because I agree.
Very rarely did I see the higher placing heifers come back to show as a 2 year old in my region. I know sometimes people just don't want the pain in the butt, but I'm pretty certain that for some, if the calf had been worth bringing out in public, it would have been shown.
I just hate seeing heifers with big fat lumps on their pinbones, that flop when they walk. A couple of years ago I watched the First Lady Classic at Agribition, which is for coming two year olds, and just couldn't believe how many of them were
rolling fat.
Personally, I never bothered to get mine that fat. My heifers weren't good enough to win a whole show, but they are good enough to be good cows for me, so I wasn't going to sacrifice that. Consequently, the couple of times I was in the top two of my classes, my appropriate conditioning was one of the reasons I was there, as those judges did not want overfat pigs (also, I did well with these heifers showing them as two year olds).
So to answer the people looking for a solution, it comes down to the judges. If there are more out there saying "She needs more cover" (which can be implicit through their placings, or sometimes they just outright say it) than there are saying "She's too fat", people are going to keep making them that fat. As someone mentioned, fat does cover a lot of faults, so a weaker judge might pick fat without even trying too. A guy familiar with breeding cattle with a really good eye is more likely to dock it.
