Well we survived Tulsa. I was real pleased with how Mr. Coburn lined wethers up. He was very consistent, his reasons fit the goats, he didn’t waste time and he was very good with the kids. Wether I agree with all of his placings or not doesn’t matter, as long as I can understand why he did what he did. The grand wether is a goat that I love in terms of structure, style, balance and overall completeness. In my opinion, he could be a little bit heavier muscled. But it is hard to make one that good on his feet and legs with a good hip, rib and shoulder while still having enough muscle and a whole lot of style. When we bought him, I thought that he could be a division winner. I guess that I was right. It wasn’t until about six weeks ago that I thought that he could do more than that. To be honest, I really couldn’t see the goat that well at that sale. As Poe said, “It was a 115 degrees in a tin roof building with a sprinker running on top of it with about fifteen people in the old wooden bleachers.” The heat waves coming from the floor of that barn may have caused me to be a little off in my evaluation of that animal.

I hated to see Duke’s div. 1 champ leave. That is one of the Kelln family’s favorite goats of all time. He was cheap to buy, had a story to him, never got sick, no fungus, easy to break and show, easy to shear, won a banner and had a great personality. Perfect goat for a 10 year old. When Duke and I would work wethers this past season, we would deal with the special ed department first and then get out Little Stevie Peaches to put us back into a good mood.

The past couple of years, we have had people question if the online sales were real. We have had good results. This Tulsa shows what kind of quality we have been offering in these sales. There were six wethers in our April online sale. Five of those wethers stayed in Oklahoma. All five were at Tulsa. Results–3 class winners, two seconds and two reserve division champs. Schoovy’s had the reserve division 6 wether, Chance Alexander had a class winner in div. 6 and Ally Riley had a 2nd in class. The Alread family bought two wethers sight unseen on that sale. One ended up as a class winner and the other was reserve division 5 behind the grand. Pretty good results.

I thought the show was very well ran. Very efficient. Classes were broke as good as they could be. Superintendents of the goat show understand goats and goat people. That is good. I was glad to hear that every effort was made to have the goat kids wearing FFA/4H jackets during the premium sale. I despise that lame ass shirt rule that they have allowed at OYE and Tulsa the past couple of years. That shirt deal has always looked wrong to me. It is a fungus that crept out of the sheep barn that I wish would go back. I could go off on this topic, but I will wait until a later date. Hats off to Mr. Staats for taking care of it for the premium sale.

Had a guy tell me that Tulsa was the end of the 900 genetics dominating the showring. Now that Tulsa is over with, I look at the list of division and reserve division champs and think “Hmmm. Don’t think that he was quite right”. All twelve wethers were sired by a son, grandson or great-grandson of 900. Tolson tells me that the reserve grand had 9 shots of 900 in his pedigree. Whether anybody likes it or not, the 900 genetics are going to continue to dominate. I do agree with the fact that whoever figures out an outcross to work on these genetics is going to get rich.