Here's another calf we raised and showed. Meet "Little Ben". I can't take credit for him - he was all my youngest son's idea. Little Ben was a little skinny the first half of his life. But he was unusally gentle. Holt (who was 8 at the time) could walk up to him in the pasture - grab an ear or put his arm around his neck - and lead him around. We had the "but he doesn't have a butt" discussion a million times, but Holt insisted I wean him as a show calf. I figured well we could let him take him to country, so I relented. I tried to kick him out of the barn a dozen times between weaning and validation, but Holt wouldn't have any part of it.
Well, Little Ben just got better and better. Grew better than any of our other calves this year. Wound up finishing around 1300 lbs and we showed him as a lightweight Simmental at Houston we he placed 8th and made the sale. Needless to say, I've gladly had to listen to "I told you so" many, many times over the last two weeks.
All in all, we had what I consider to be a very good year. Reserve Grand at our county and made the sale with two of four steers in the barn. I added a photo of the black calf above that wound up placing 4th in the Class 1 AOBs at San Antonio. A third (the Hereford pictured above) was one spot out at San Antonio, but he had been too heavy too long and was starting to break down. The red steer just wasn't pretty enough on the move at Houston to get pulled.