Blast from the past

My mom recently ran across these gems. Some of my very first years showing beef at the Morrill County Fair! This seems like an appropriate segway into how I got my feet wet (and stepped on many times) in the beef industry.
Meet Cocoa,

Cocoa - Reserve Champion Breeding Heifer 2003

In this picture, Cocoa is a heifer calf. Heifer simply means that she is a female, and calf indicates that she is still a baby. The origin behind her name is simple. I bought my first cow/calf pair (a momma and a baby together) at the end of 3rd grade. It seemed fitting at the time to name the momma cow Chocolate, thus the only logical name for her baby was Cocoa! Cocoa later went on to have a bull calf named Roo, but that's a story for another day.

This was the first of many Grand/Reserve Champion ribbons that Cocoa would go one to get at the county fair. The red thing in my hand is called a show stick. We use it in the ring to help set up the animals feet, so they stand nice and pretty for the judge.  (see picture below)

I borrowed this next picture from a good friend, who shows cattle at some of the bigger stock shows. Check out her blog for some more great learning about the industry!
 http://gravelandthegoodlife.blogspot.com/2013_09_01_archive.html

Photo courtesy of Jenny Keys

Back to Cocoa. Cocoa is what you might call a Black Angus calf. Angus is the breed of cattle, there are typically Black and Red Angus cattle, the distinction in color making them uniquely different! While we're on the topic of breeds, the calf here is a Charolais calf. This was my first bucket calf that I showed at the county fair, but definitely not my first bucket calf.

When momma cows don't have enough milk for their babies, or often times when they have twins, the calf is pulled off and fed milk replacer from a bottle. They get fed anywhere from 3 to 4 times per day, depending on what they need to meet their nutritional requirements, since they can't get it from their mom.

2002 Morrill County Fair

The calf in the picture above was born in February, and I bottle fed him until he was old enough to eat hay and grain on his own. I spent lots of time with him, and we got to be best buds. Even after I stopped feeding him a bottle, he would still suck on my fingers.  I was being a bit dramatic in this photo, but I hope you can get a sense for how much I really love cattle. They are an important part of not only life, but of yours too!