Well I think you hit a couple of things in your post...many of the calves have the bloom because they are the early maturing type, these are the calves that I typically find look great in sales and get a ton of bids, do well at their first few prospect shows and then fall apart because they were pushed to peak to early...also as you mentioned with birth dates, a lot of the calves are a lot older than what the papers say they are, so naturally are gonna look a little more bloomy than a calf that is truly that age...the other thing I see happening is people pooring the feed to these young calves, and even the finisher at this point...personally if I am looking at say a 6 month old calf, I WANT them to be green, because they SHOULD be green at that stage of their life, its only natural...as I said before I think we push to many of these calves to be "backdrop pretty, champion" looking calves from the day they hit the ground, and then they crash before their end point comes because we peaked them to early...there isnt a calf out there that holds their peak, best looking condition for ever and if you push them to look like that to early then they typically dont hold onto it for the big show, at least this is my experience...for the spring shows around here I start pushing my cattle about this time, I think it gets them there and they look good and fresh come show day.
