WHAT AN AMAZING and exhausting WEEKEND! Shannon got to show her steer, Ferrix, at the National Western Stock Show.
But let me back up a bit and tell the entire story.
Catch-a-Calf is a program that has been around for 90 years at the National Western Stock Show. It involves bringing kids in (ages 14-18) to literally catch a calf in a big arena. If they can catch one, they get to have one. It may have been in the past that if you caught one, that's the one you kept. But now, they use roping calves for the actual catching - and the kids come back months later to pick up beef steers that all come from the same breeder and are all the same breed.
After they catch their calf, they come back in May and get to bring home their show steer. They also meet their sponsors, who are with them along the way. Shannon's Sponsor was Dr. John Matsushima, who is 104 years old, and he invented Steam-Flaked Corn which revolutionized the beef industry, making the nutrients in corn more available for cattle to digest. He gifted her a book he wrote about the Catch-a-Calf program, and gave her guidance on feeding and growth of her steer. They came out to visit several times throughout the program to see how Ferrix was doing.
Since we picked up Ferrix on May the 4th - Shannon thought it was fitting to give him a Star Wars name. She thought long and hard about several names, and settled on Ferrix, a planet that was referenced in the Mandalorian. Ferrix weighted 585 Pounds on the day we picked him up. And he was pretty well halter trained. Not perfect, but he was easy to load and easy to handle when we got home. We were off to a great start.
Now, from May 2024 to January 2025, Shannon's job was to feed him so he would grow (aiming for a finish weight close to 1300 lbs), train him so she could show him in the ring, weigh him once a month to track his progress and fill out an entire project book detailing his weight, the cost of his feed, any other types of health care activities and get him ready for fair. This involved feeding him grain twice a day, spending time bathing him, brushing him, walking him on a halter and the fun part - taking him to Pioneer Sand to get his weight.
Weight. Wait, what? Yeah! We don't have a scale big enough for a 500 lb steer, and certainly not a scale big enough for a 1200 lb steer. So once a month, we would load him in the trailer, and take him to Pioneer Sand in Berthoud, and we would walk him over to the scale to get his weight. It was always a fun adventure! Nope, I didn't take pictures.
We did take him to the Boulder County Fair, where he was shown in a special exhibition class. This was great practice for Stock Show. He would be in an open pen with other animals, tied to a post by a halter and a neck rope. He would be walked around a ring by Shannon, in a place with weird lights and people making announcements on a speaker. It was all good practice for him.
Boulder County Fair should have clued us in, and I think it did, about how hard saying goodbye was going to be. At the County Fair, Shannon showed her first market steer, Brisket. At the end of the fair is the market sale, where the market animals get auctioned. Brisket went to this auction and then did not get to come home. That was REALLY REALLY hard. We both cried. A LOT.
After Brisket left, we knew Ferrix had the same fate. So to try and commemorate their bond, we went to a friends' very beautiful farm and did a little photo shoot!
Such a big fuzzy bear. I called him my perfect gentleman. He was generally calm and easy to handle, even if he was 10 times as big as Shannon.
And before we knew it, the big weekend was upon us. OK, I am sure Shannon was thinking all about Ferrix and the show. I was thinking about how I was going to get him there. Driving a trailer down to Denver is not my favorite thing to do - but driving it down in January is a crap shoot for sure. We got lucky with no snow, but it sure was cold. Getting him down there also involved getting all his stuff down there - feed, hay, supplies, treats, his trim chute (which is made of carbon steel, by the way) and all our stuff to stay down there for 3 nights. That list includes Shannon's show clothing and boots, show halters for Ferrix and all his gear for bathing, blow drying and his various sprays for his hair. This dude has more product than I think I have ever used in my life. Nah, that's a lie, I was a teen in the 80s, so there's that.
Thankfully, when we arrived, there were a crew of volunteers waiting to help us. They helped us unload everything - and get it into place. That includes the trim chute, which is very heavy. We got unloaded so quickly, I was able to leave Shannon with Ferrix and her friends - and go back home and drop off the trailer! HOORAY! It also gave me time to get grain to my sheep since Larry couldn't do it with his foot surgery.
Then the real fun began! We arrived on Thursday - with time to get everything set up, get Ferrix settled, and spend our first night in the hotel. The next day was weigh-in and record book check. Friday was rough. He didn't gain any weight between his December weigh-in and Stock Show, he actually lost a few pounds. Shannon really lost it. I think at that point, any hopes of getting Grand or Reserve had left her, and she spent that day processing that. I worked hard to encourage her to keep going and to do her best to show him off. They had some time that day in the morning to "exercise" their steers around the barn. They also had interviews that day. Shannon had lost her voice and was really concerned about the interview. That evening they had time in the arena to walk the steers around. By then the kids were tired. Ferrix wasn't behaving. She had spent part of the day brushing him and blowing him and working on trimming him, which didn't go perfectly. It was the end of the day, and she kind of lost it in the ring. Friday was hard and a very long day.
But Saturday was the big day. This was show day. Keep in mind, the barn opened at 6AM and closed at 9. And we spent almost that entire time in the barn. And it wasn't super warm in there, unless you were hugging a steer! So we got to the barn early on Saturday. Shannon had to get Ferrix bathed, dried, sprayed and zhuzhed. She also had to be dressed up herself. They had some time early that morning to practice in the ring one last time before all the cleaning up.
There were two shows Saturday, showmanship and the market show. Showmanship is how the participant handles the steer, prepped the steer, how they interact with the judges and more. It's about the performance of the kiddo. Shannon took 7th in her class for Showmanship.
The Market Show is about the steer. The judges look for how the steer is filled out as a beef breed, are they meaty, or fatty, etc. Ferrix took 8th in his class for Market Show.
After that was over, we had some time to walk around the show and process a lot of what had happened. We would find out Sunday morning more about the awards and who took Grand and Reserve. But Sunday also meant that Ferrix was going home. Shannon and her friend Alex spent as much time with Ferrix and Harry on Saturday as they could. This was it, it was the last hours they would spend with their steers.
Sunday morning was utter torture. We got to the barn early, again. We wanted to make sure the steers were fed, watered and their stalls clean before we headed off to the awards. At the awards ceremony, we got to sit with Shannon's sponsors again. They gave out all of the awards for all the categories, as well as announcing Grand and Reserve. Shannon got 8th place in the Interviews, and 3rd place in Sponsor Relations. GREAT JOB kiddo! The awards ceremony ended at 9:30AM. 11:00AM was when we walked the steers to their holding pen, and said goodbye. Do you know how long 90 minutes can last? I tried to distract myself with cleaning up opportunities - to pack things up and get ready to head out. And I tried to give Ferrix extra treats and love. It was the longest 90 minutes, and Shannon and I were both bawling. We didn't want to go. We didn't want to take him away. And he didn't make it easy. My perfect gentleman was so excited to go outside that we could hardly control him, and he practically ran everyone over on the way to the pen. All while Shannon and I were bawling our eyes out.
It was so hard. After we said goodbye, we brought the truck back around to pack all our stuff up and go home. Shannon didn't want to spend another minute at the Stock Show. Our crew of volunteers were all gone, but we did find some helpful folks to help us get our chute out to the truck so we could go home. He final words to me on the ride home where "why do we show market steers?" The goodbyes are JUST SO HARD.
Shannon didn't take home the big prize of Grand or Reserve Champion. But she did get to spend time with this beautiful boy. I said the same thing about Ferrix that I say about the dogs in our lives: that the pain of losing them is worth the joy of the love we had with them. And I'll take that pain every time, because the love and the memories are always worth it. Goodbye, big fella. You meant the world to us both.
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