When November approaches and harvest is wrapping up, my mind always goes back to the North American International Livestock Exposition (NAILE) in Louisville, Kentucky.\u00a0 For decades it was the annual World Series of livestock shows for my children and me.<\/p>\n
My passion for showing livestock started when I was nine years old when I convinced my father to let me show pigs at the county 4-H fair.\u00a0 This was not something my older siblings were involved with, so I was pretty much on my own.\u00a0 I fixed up a pen for the pigs in the old barn behind our home.\u00a0 Dad inspected it before we went to the fairgrounds for a pig sale.\u00a0 He helped me buy five Chester White barrows and the project began.<\/p>\n
Dad would bring the feed home for me when I needed it, but for the most part I was on my own.\u00a0 At the time, I didn\u2019t realize why he always brought a bill home for me with the feed because we owned a feed mill.\u00a0 But when I went in to pay the feed account off after I sold my pigs, the lesson was learned.<\/p>\n
I spent hours every day with the pigs, walking them and taming them down.\u00a0 When fair time approached, I built a ramp to load them onto the pick-up truck.\u00a0 Keep in mind I was nine, so the plan was sound, but the engineering was not.\u00a0 Dad came out that morning, and as we pushed the pigs up the ramp, it didn\u2019t take long for them to tear it apart.\u00a0 Dad realized this was not going to work, so he ran to the feed mill and brought back three of the biggest guys he could find.\u00a0 They tore into the pigs and man-handled them onto the truck.\u00a0 We got four on and by this time the fifth one was crazy wild.\u00a0 So, we left for the fair leaving one behind; dad called Bill Reinke at the hog market to come and pick him up.<\/p>\n
I remember it was not hard to spot my pigs in the Chester White classes because they were the ones with the bright red ears and tails.\u00a0 I did not have any big winners, but all my pigs placed, and I was hooked. \u00a0I loved the entire process and was ready for next year.\u00a0 The project continued and I continued to learn more and do better every year.\u00a0 By the time I was 16 I was able to drive, so I was doing it all myself.\u00a0 I worked every weekend and summer on our company farm about 30 miles from home, so I kept my pigs there (we actually had a livestock ramp there). In my ninth year, I finally reached the livestock showing promised land; I had the Grand Champion Barrow at the Porter County Fair!\u00a0 My dad came up to watch the grand champion drive on his lunch break.\u00a0 One of the very good hog breeders at that time said to him, \u201cVirgil, did you pick that pig out?\u201d\u00a0 Dad responded, \u201cThat\u2019s the first time I ever saw that pig!\u201d<\/p>\n
After I was out of 4-H I helped my nephews some, but when I really got back into showing livestock was when my own kids were old enough to show.\u00a0 My two boys were the oldest and we took off where I left off showing pigs at the county fair.\u00a0 When my oldest daughter\u2019s time to start came, she wanted to show sheep.\u00a0 We didn\u2019t have a clue, but we gave it a shot.\u00a0 She had three lambs, all white-faced breeds.\u00a0 When we got to the fair, we had the only white-faced lambs in the market show; all the others were Suffolk, Crossbreds, and Hamps.\u00a0 Needless to say, she learned how to lose early in her experience, but she had one light weight little Corriedale lamb that was actually second in his class among all the black-faced lambs.\u00a0 The judge, Dan Hogue from Black Hawk College, encouraged us to take the lamb to the State Fair.\u00a0 We did and she had the Reserve Champion Corriedale Lamb at the Indiana State Fair.\u00a0 We were all very excited, even the boys, and we shifted our attention to raising sheep.\u00a0 A few years later we bought a flock of Oxford sheep (52 head), and we were in the sheep business.<\/p>\n
While the project was always focused on the kids with the grooming required for breeding sheep, I had a couple partners over the years to help with that.\u00a0 By now we had two more girls who started showing as soon as they were able to hold onto a halter.\u00a0 We would show at our county fair, plus Indiana and several other state fairs, and of course, NAILE every year.<\/p>\n
We had our share of success with our livestock over the years and had many county, state, and national honors, but the real success was our children.\u00a0 One comment my middle daughter said that I will never forget one late night rolling into the Kentucky State Fairgrounds with our truck and trailer, \u201cDad, I\u2019d rather be with you in Louisville than Disney World.\u201d<\/p>\n
Showing livestock was indeed a family project that included bottle feeding lambs, chores, washing, grooming, walking, and just a lot of TLC.\u00a0 They all learned hard work pays off. \u00a0They learned how to win with humility and lose with dignity.\u00a0 They learned that integrity and fair play is the only way to do it, and you don\u2019t have to buy the most expensive animal to win.\u00a0 But most of all, they learned what it meant to come together as a family to have fun and work hard, and it created memories and lessons that helped build them into the fine parents they have all become.<\/p>\n
By Vic Heinold<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
When November approaches and harvest is wrapping up, my mind always goes back to the North American International Livestock Exposition (NAILE) in Louisville, Kentucky.\u00a0 For decades it was the annual World Series of livestock shows for my children and me. My passion for showing livestock started when I was nine years old when I convinced […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1308","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n