Old School Fitting Supplies

[dori36]

Does anyone remember the very first blowers that were on wheels?  Looked like a big box with a hose on the end of it - they were powder blue with a white tip.  I got mine from a horse trainer when he bought a new one.

I had one of those for my horses when I used to show them.  Groomaster?  Or something like that?  I'm loving this thread.  It has brought out all the SP grownups - refreshing!!

 

[JoeBnTN]

Does anyone remember the very first blowers that were on wheels?  Looked like a big box with a hose on the end of it - they were powder blue with a white tip.  I got mine from a horse trainer when he bought a new one.

I had one of those for my horses when I used to show them.  Groomaster?  Or something like that?  I'm loving this thread.  It has brought out all the SP grownups - refreshing!!

I think your right- the Sunbeam Groom-master.  You could flip the hoses and actually vacuum your horse or calf.

 

[oakview]

I would like to hear from some of the 'older timers' than me that traveled the show circuit on rail.  I missed out on that by a few years.  We started showing in the mid 60's and hired a local trucker to haul our cattle to the fairs.  Some of the big shots had their own trucks.  I'll bet it would hard to find a loading chute at most of the fairs today.  I loved to hear the stories of traveling to Chicago, Kansas City, Denver, etc., with the show cattle on the train.

 

[Ruchian]

What did you use hand shears on? I use the sheepshead clippers all the time, especially when I twine or heavily build legs, but never the hand shears. It would be cool to see though.

i just used them to touch up the tail head and a few other places because nobody was able to find me anything else, clippers, scissors, anything.  I ended up using them and the scissors on my leatherman

 

[dori36]

Does anyone remember the very first blowers that were on wheels?  Looked like a big box with a hose on the end of it - they were powder blue with a white tip.  I got mine from a horse trainer when he bought a new one.

I had one of those for my horses when I used to show them.  Groomaster?  Or something like that?  I'm loving this thread.  It has brought out all the SP grownups - refreshing!!

I think your right- the Sunbeam Groom-master.  You could flip the hoses and actually vacuum your horse or calf.

For the horses we only used it as a vacuum, not a blower. 

 

[knabe]

What did you use hand shears on? I use the sheepshead clippers all the time, especially when I twine or heavily build legs, but never the hand shears. It would be cool to see though.

tail heads and long hairs on sides as you comb up as a final clipping.  those oddball long hairs that lay down fast could be really frustrating as they laid down clumps.

 

[DLD]

I got in on the tail end of the glycerine bars and peach dressing, so I remember when 3M adhesive and shaving cream were pretty much state of the art grooming supplies.  I still have the old garden dust fogger we used for graphite powder, too. I remember fitting black cattle with Slick Black and John Deere graphite powder - took 3 or 4 days to wash all that stuff off of yourself.  When you'd blow your nose, it'd come out black for at least that long, too.  Had to dress the Herefords and Shorthorns first and get 'em far away before you started on the black cattle, or they'd be black, too...

Anyone else remember those very first aluminum handle scotch combs?  The ones that were anodized in colors?  My buddy and I each bought one at Kansas City in '81 (the first time we'd seen 'em). I believe
we've both still got 'em - mine's green and his is red.

 

[justintime]

The big box Electrogroom blower on wheels was mentioned in this post. We had the first one I know of in Western Canada, as my dad and I purchased it in the US after seeing one at a show. I think we paid about $100 for it, which seemed to be a pile of money to me at the time. You could blow with this blower or vacuum with it by putting the hose on the air intake on the top. I think we purchased this blower in 1963, and I still have it, and it works just fine. I have never changed a switch, or a motor and I think it still blows almost as good as the newer ones. It doesn't get used on many cattle anymore, but it sits in the barn as a back up if it is needed. Other than being bigger, it is easy to use as you do not have to bend over to turn it on and off.

You brought back many memories. I have a couple old wooden show boxes sitting in the shop yet, and one still contains a bunch of the supplies we used to use to dress cattle. There is still glycerine bars, several jars of different sticky hair gunk, two or three liners, hand shears, creolin, at least 15 of those wide nosed studded show halters. Our old feed mixing box just was thrown out last fall.I wonder how many tons of feed were mixed in it. I still have the little shovel we used to mix the feed, and it is well used as the bottom is wore off substantially.  It travelled with us to hundreds of small fairs. There was no such thing as show ration in those days, so you bagged your own rolled feed and built your own. My dad even oftentimes mixed different feed mixes for different animals, depending how much weight gain, or fill they needed . I still have a pail full of horn weights somewhere here. We also used to drill a small hole threw the end of the horn and wire a small piece of logging chain across their heads to each horn. It was amazing how this would shape the horns properly.

Back in those days we cooked feed for all the show cattle especially in the fall to spring seasons. I have no idea how old our feed cooker is, as it has been here my entire life ( and that is getting to be a l-o-n-g time. I had not used it in probably 20 years, until late last summer. I plugged it in and it still worked so I started to cook barley and corn. The smell of cooked grain is something you never forget. I mixed cooked feed with our show ration, and the calves would almost knock you over when you walked into the pen with it.

I can also remember breeders dragging a bunch of nurse cows with them to the shows. The fairs usually had an old barn somewhere on the grounds where the nurse cows were kept and I can remember yearling and even an occasional two year old bull still nursing a cow. The poor old nurse cows would almost be lifted off the ground, and heaven help them if they happened to come into heat!

 

[GONEWEST]

Good memories. I still have one of those old liner combs and I am sure there are wide nosed halters here somewhere. Curry combs and that plastic brush you could attach to the hose as well. And I still use the Circuiteer I I had in high school in the barn. Use one of those old conveyor belts in the barn along with some stall dividers that must weigh 200 lbs each.

 

[clifflem]

I'll try to post a picture of my brownie clippers with the brush attachment.  Thought some of the youngsters wouldn't understand what we were talking about.

 

[clifflem]

Oakview-- there aren't very many of the old timers that shipped cattle by rail to shows left.  One of my Dad's cousins worked for a Polled Hereford outfit that showed cattle all over the US that operated in the Northeast Texas Panhandle.  He can tell some interesting stories about traveling by rail.  Joe and Walter Lewis were showing cattle at that time and he knew them.
Chuck Leemon from Illinois could tell some stories about it too.  I remember having a conversation about it with Chuck in Louisville back in the late 80's or early 90's.  He explained how they rented a boxcar at the beginning of season and kept the same one for the entire show season.  I don't know if Chuck is still alive or not, I haven't been around the open shows for about 10 years or so, but he was a real character that I always enjoyed visiting with. 

 

[ROAD WARRIOR]

Oakview-- there aren't very many of the old timers that shipped cattle by rail to shows left.  One of my Dad's cousins worked for a Polled Hereford outfit that showed cattle all over the US that operated in the Northeast Texas Panhandle.  He can tell some interesting stories about traveling by rail.  Joe and Walter Lewis were showing cattle at that time and he knew them.
Chuck Leemon from Illinois could tell some stories about it too.  I remember having a conversation about it with Chuck in Louisville back in the late 80's or early 90's.  He explained how they rented a boxcar at the beginning of season and kept the same one for the entire show season.  I don't know if Chuck is still alive or not, I haven't been around the open shows for about 10 years or so, but he was a real character that I always enjoyed visiting with. 

About the youngest guys that I know of that road the rails with show cattle are in their late sixties and early seventies. The gentleman that got me started in the business 30+ years ago would tell stories of their travels on the rail road. I still have a huge amount of respect for these guys. When you stop and think about it they did pretty much the same thing that alot of us do without thousands of dollars in equipment and supplies, just hard work and elbow grease. I often wonder how many of todays "fitters" would there be if there wasn't a show supply trailer sitting outside of every show pavillion. RW

 

[Telos]

Well, I'm one of the dinosaurs on here so I well remember Orvis, glycerin soap, mineral oil and I was really big time because I had what almost nobody else had, the roto brush. A blocking chute was once my Christmas wish. Usually clipped with calves tied to the fence.

Back in the good ole days you did not need much but we probably weren't contributing to global warming as much either.

 

[ROAD WARRIOR]

I'll try to post a picture of my brownie clippers with the brush attachment.  Thought some of the youngsters wouldn't understand what we were talking about.

Clifflem - Ready to seel yet? RW

 

[shortyjock89]

Clifflem-

Chuck Leemon lives about 3 miles from me and you're right, he's a character!  He's pretty much been a grandpa to me my whole life and we've known the Leemon family for close to 100 years!  You should come to the IL State Fair this year if you can, Chuck's grandson's have been pretty dominant in the Shorthorn shows the last few years (like always), and I'm sure he's gonna have plenty of stories!