The 2013 version of the Tulsa State Fair wether show is in the books.  I had a blast.  Duke didn’t want to show at Tulsa and I agreed.  Keep the goats at home.  He played football on Monday night then came to Tulsa on Thursday night to judge livestock today.  

     I had not seen Jeff Ripley judge wethers before so I wasn’t quite sure what kind he liked.  I would have to say that he is fairly consistent.  Better be wide based, big ribbed and loins better tie wide at their hip/loin junction.  Most of the goats had a good look to them.  The top end of most classes was stacked with good goats, but then the quality dropped off.  

      The grand was shown by Kami Oller.  Yes, she normally shows does, but she came over to the cool kids barn and won a big one.  Congrats to the family.  This goat was way wide based, huge ribbed, big backed and wide stifle-to stifle.  He was off in his hip and shoulder and he won’t win any beauty contests.  He either had to win or be 5th in class as nothing else looked like him.  Not necessarily my type, but I wasn’t the one asked to judge.  He won his division pretty easily and I think most people thought he would be grand.

     The reserve grand was shown by Morgan Craig.  She has been a consistent top end showman for years at Tulsa and OYE.  This goat was a double bred Joe Dirt from Tyke.  He was wide based, big ribbed and big loined as well.  He wasn’t as massive from behind as the grand, but he was better balanced and cooler to look at.  I was happy to sell that goat to the Craig’s as I knew he would get fed and shown right.  Congrats to that family.  

     The lineup of the champions and reserves was consistent as they all had power and bone.  

     We were tickled with how our crew of showmen got along.  Sarah Murphy won division 1 with a Rainman/Harley wether that we raised.  I didn’t want to lose him at Tulsa, but at least he got a banner.  Between Poe Cat and I, there were 6 wethers in the premium sale sired by Rainman.  Joe Dirt had several wethers in the sale.  Those 2 bucks just keep siring damn good goats.  Darcy Peach won div. 6 with a Roy Sanders wether.  He was a May 2012 goat that was too good to load on the truck at OYE.  Bree Taylor was res. div. 6 with Babe–the 3 time county grand champion wether from Helms.  This goat has a resume of wins and high placings for 2012 & 2013 and he was older than May 2012.  It takes some work and dedication to hold these old wethers but it pays off for a show like Tulsa.  

     The Tulsa show is one that I like because we stay at a hotel that is a short walking distance to the barns.   At times, not having to drive is valuable.     The weather is normally good and it is a really good state fair.  What I don’t like about Tulsa is the premium sale.  Basically, it sucks.  If you take a wether to Tulsa that would work for OYE and he makes the sale, he won’t bring but $500 to $1,500 and you can’t replace him for that.  Thus, the reason we took a bunch of old wethers or cheap ones.  

     Doe show this weekend.  Have a good day.     

I’m off to the Tulsa State Fair.  

Peace out.

Stay flexible but not limp.

    Yes, the weatherpeople were right.  We got about .7″ on Friday night/early Saturday morning.  Perfect.  Just enough that JQ could bury my 4 wheeler in a terrace channel on Sunday evening.  I mean buried.  Thank goodness I took the Gator to the store to get serviced.  

      What did we do on a beautiful Saturday evening?  Well, we went and watched Larry the Cable Guy in Woodward, OK.  Yes, a big star like that in Woodward.  Watch out as there just might be more big stuff happening in Woodward.  It was a wonderful evening, spent with good friends.  The atmosphere was great.  However, there is a story of somebody in the goat world ending up spending the evening with Larry.  No, it wasn’t me.  

      I have a question for all of you out there.  Shouldn’t a pork burger be REQUIRED to have bacon on it?  I’m sitting here eating a killer good pork burger that was just cooked by the Dragon Lady.  I asked where the bacon was to go on this sam-ich and you would have thought that I asked for the combination to Fort Knox. I kind of feel like the old lady in the Wendy’s commercials, except this would be “Where’s the bacon?”

      Now how about a goat burger?  I have not had one of those.  I’m going to pencil that in on my shit-to-do list.  Not a high priority item, but dang sure something I will do in the next year.  

     Tulsa is this week.  Im not really fired up, but I’m ready to go.  Here we go!

     Friday is here.  Saturday will be better.  The weather people are calling it a 100% chance of rain tonight and tomorrow morning.  We’ll see.  It looks like we finally stopped the chinese from spamming my email account.  You want to talk about something that looks wicked, try looking at 25 to 30 emails in your inbox that are in chinese letters.  Maybe, it was actually some chinese people needing show goats or semen on Rumour at $1,000 per straw.  I’ll never know.

     It’s the time of year to be thinking about blanketing your show goats.  We have a rule that if you need a hoodie on when you go outside, then your goats need at least a canvas blanket.  If you need a jacket, then the goats need a lined blanket.  And if you need mutliple layers, so do the goats.  Sometimes, you have to put a blanket on at night, then take it off the next day.  Animals need to be kept comfortable in order to look the part.  

     If you need blankets then you need to get in contact with Brooke Taylor.  She makes the best goat blankets.  They are built hell-for-stout.  They have an insert liner that is velcroed in to place and have the best buckles so that you don’t have to wrestle them in the dark when trying to get the blankets snugged to fit.  Catch her at Tulsa next week or I can get you in contact with her.  

     Oh, by the way.  I am a little amped as they have started filming “Dumb and Dumber To”.  I doubt that it can compare to the original but they might suprise me and “totally redeem themselves”.  

      I love it when a message board can BLOW up without people getting nasty and mad.  Without a doubt, the main reason that oklahomashowgoats.com first took off was the message board.  Breeders, interested parties, & most of all ag teachers had to check the message board to see what was being written.  Most hid behind a fake name.  Some of us always signed in with our real names.  But then, it became a chore keeping it policed, which meant that we had to start banning people.  Kela ran the website, but I had to be the one to monitor the message board.  The fights were usually between purebred breeders.  Their feelings always seemed to get hurt real quick.  Seems like none of them lasted very long in the goat business.

      When Kela sold the site to the present owners, I continued to post on the message board.  Then, Julie and I decided that I ought to have my own platform where she didn’t have to worry about what I typed.  Thus, the hatching of this blog.  I’ve mentioned on here before that it is hard to edit myself, but this is the edited version and my typing is WAY cleaner than my vocabulary.  Some might say that I can be a bit abrasive.  

     There were some classic posts back in the days of the original message board.  I still have a copy of the “Old Mansion” speech written by a now former goat breeder.  It was well written and was PAGES long.  Brett from Tibet had some interesting posts.  Of course, a-hole BoB caused some issues.  My favorite was a reply from “Ishmael from Israel”.  I also remember a post about crappy gates in Alex, OK.  Classic.  

     It is amazing how many people read these things.  They can be a marketing tool, eucational. a place to network or just a place to vent.  I enjoy the fact that people from all over read this blog.  I do wish they could actually get to see me in my natural environment, instead of just forming an opinion about the stuff that I write on here.  Kind of a like a monkey in a zoo versus the wild, I’m way more entertaining in my own habitat.  

     I have to be careful what I write on here.  For example, I mentioned last week that I might sell some bred does.  I shouldn’t have written anything until I knew for sure what I was doing.  Lots of phone calls and texts wanting me to price them.  I won’t give them away, but I will listen to offers.  

     I tried to make a mark today.  I just hope it was more than just a skid mark.  

     If you are in dire need of reading some great wisdom that came from the depths of my mind, then go to oklahomashowgoats.com message board and read my reply to the “question” of the day.  It does come with a dis-claimer.  You probably won’t be any smarter after reading.  

Stay flexible but not limp.

     The great state fair is over with.  It was a successful trip.  Our crew got along really well in the wether show.  Lexi Vanderwork had the grand wether (Helms).  Braden Schovanec had the res. grand wether (double bred Joe Dirt from Tyke).  Bree Taylor had the res. lightweight behing Lexi and the res. heavy was a Rainman kid from Poe.       What about Duke?  Well, he was 6th with his little paint goat.  And then he took Bob, our Rumour wether into class.  He immediately got sent to the scales.  When I say scale(S), I mean both of them as he weighed a pound too heavy on the first set and guess what?  He still weighed a pound too heavy on the second scale.  It happens.  One thing about it, the dad of that kid won’t be pissed at anybody.  Nobody to blame it on but myself.  Like the late great Ritson Urban always said, “If you ain’t never weighed one out, then you weren’t trying to win very bad.”

     The doe show went well.  Bob & Jodi Seelke raised the grand overall doe kid sired by their AK buck.  They also raised the CHAMP & RES. CHAMP div. 2 doe kids sired by RUMOUR HAS IT.  Congrats to them.  There were a lot of high placing Joe Dirt doe kids.  

      I got asked a LOT about my hatred of does and doe shows this weekend.  Why do I despise doe shows?  Very few people actually buy their does.  They borrow them.  If you don’t have to bankroll a showstring it makes it WAY easy to assemble a set.  If your only expenses are feed and time, it changes the playing field.  When you are trying to assemble a team of wethers ranging in price from $1,500 to $7,500, it doesn’t take long to run out of funds.  Sure, if a bunch of wether breeders wanted to loan me their wethers to show and then give them back, I would be way in.  But that isn’t feasible.  And there is NO way to police ownership of these doe kids.  And as a breeder,  I too loan out several doe kids each year.  Why?  It gets them off of my feed bill.  I don’t blame the breeders or the feeders.  I just feel that it devalues the competition.

      What else would I like to change about the doe shows?  Several things.  First, test them.  This goes for does, heifers, gilts, etc.  They are a show animal, they should be clean.  Second, slick shear them.  Lots of common does win as they hide behind fat and hair.  Our crew can work hair with the best of them, but I would still rather shear them.  It will also make the animals better.  How’s that you say?  Look at the improvement in quality of sheep since they started slick shearing as well as the steers in texas.  There is nothing to hide behind.  There is going to be a slick shear/test DOE show at the Lone Star Elite Jackpot this year.  That sounds like my kind of deal.  

     Next show up–Tulsa.  Our team isn’t going to take much.  Why?  Our money shows are everything after Tulsa.  The Tulsa sale hasn’t been very good and it is too hard to replace a wether at this time of year.  I don’t know, maybe somebody could just loan me one out of their keeper pen.

     Yep, I got some rain last night.  1.6″ in all 3 gauges around the farm.  It is an official measurement as I cleaned the dead bugs out of the gauges right as the rain started about 5 pm yesterday.  It was a really good rain.  No wind.  It came straight down from 5 to about 9.  Time to get the drills ready because there will be a lot of wheat drilled in this part of the world the next couple of weeks.  

     I’ve also got some does bred.  I had turned Rumour in with a pen of does during the middle of July just to see what would happen.  Guess what?  He got some.  Tammy took a trailer load to the vet yesterday and had them ultra-sounded.  I probably need to sell a few of these as I really don’t want to kid a pile of them in December, but they are all really good, proven does.  We’ll see.

     Today, I will eat my traditional cheddar burger at Earl’s.  It’s tradition for us to go to OYE or the State Fair, unload, setup and then go to Earl’s for lunch.       

     It is a well-known fact that I despise dealing with does.  I like cows, liked a few sows, dealt with some hens that were decent, ewes–nope, they hatch more sheep, so I am OUT!  But does?  I would rather slam my head in a sliding glass door than deal with mature does.  I say/write this and get replies like “I love my does.  You should be nicer to them and they will love you back.”  BS.  

     This statement means that you have 2 does or have too much time on your hands and they are spoiled.  If you have more than 10 does, then those does are a PITA.  That would be Pain In The Donkey.  

Does.  They will wear down a fence.  Destroy gates.  Bash shed walls.  Crap in their own feed and water.  Will go through a gate if you don’t want them to and will NOT go through a gate if you want them to.  

      They won’t rub on a gate unless it is un-latched.  How do you know where they rub?  They will rub the galvanization or paint off a panel, plus there will be a track where they rub with shedded hair on the ground everywhere that they rub.  They won’t touch a gate unless you walk through it and think to yourself, “They won’t push on this one.”  So you leave it unlatched and then SOAB!! That worthless C?n$ is out!

     I could make a goat operation cash-flow if it wasn’t for the does.  Bucks.  Keep them seperated.  Growing goats.  Tight pen with plenty of feed.  Wethers–sell them to good feeders.  Doe kids–cash them in.  Does. They destroy everything, crap on everything, waste hay, take up space,  and make my life miserable.  

     There is only one positive to a doe goat.  You can’t make good wethers without them.  Thus, the reason that I have does around here.  As soon as they figure out how to put goat embyos in something other than a doe goat, well, I’m in.  Unless it is a ewe, then I am way out.  Put them in a chicken egg and we’ll incubate them and HATCH them. 

      I saw a shit load (excuse me, an ass load;  which is more?)  I saw a pile of show goats today.  Way good goats, better people.  These kind of deals make for great competition.  The better ones go home and get serious.   

     I promised the Dragon Lady that I would go to the drive in movie at Shattuck and watch GREASE.  I have no problem watching a movie where they had to literally “sow” Olivia Newton-John in-to those pants.  It looked good back in 1980 and it still looks good in 2013.  I like a good musical.  Corny, maybe.  Good, YES.  We had fun.  The kids had fun.  

      Yes, we went to Shattuck and watched the movie GREASE.  At the drive in.  And yes, we drove the ’93 Chevey Van.  That was the surround sound for all to listen.  It is a great movie.  My only issue…How In the heck has John Travolta continued to get leading roles?….And he is still a known commodity.  He’s like CHER, twinkies and 900.  They will still be around after an apocalypse.