SOUTH BRUCE – The past couple of weeks have been busy for the South Bruce Dairy Club, with the Lucknow Dairy 4-H Invitational on Aug. 1 and the final barn tour on Aug. 10.
The Lucknow Dairy 4-H Invitational is the largest one-day 4-H dairy show in Canada. There were over 100 calves and competitors this year. The judge this year was Laura Phoenix.
For those of you that have never been to a show, let me try and describe the day to you. While this show started at 11:45 a.m., the first of the 4H’ers were in the barn by 5:30 a.m. to set up the bedding pack and claim space for the rest of the club members that were still on the road with trailer loads of calves and gear. By 6 a.m. the calves were arriving and baths, to clean any dirt that had gotten on the calves during transit, were in full swing. The clean calves were settled into their places on the bedding pack and all the clipping and prepping supplies were offloaded along with the feed and water for the day. Registration opened at 9 a.m., and each showman was given a white show shirt. The rest of the morning was taken up with clipping, prepping, and polishing the calves.
As the time for the show to start neared, members changed into their white show outfits and waited for their classes to begin. Seven members from the South Bruce Dairy 4-H Club competed at the show. The show started with the Pre 4-H class (kids age nine and under), followed by the showmanship classes. Showmanship is a competition between showmen on who can show their calf the best. The judge watches each of the showmen as they enter the ring and as they move around the ring, looking to see how they work with their calf, how they cover their calf’s faults, etc.
Because there were so many 4-H members competing, the classes were split into heats, with the judge only taking the top showmen from each heat to compete for placing in the actual class. Brandon Elliott took 11th and Micaela Hill placed 12th in the senior showmanship class.
After showmanship it was time for the conformation classes. Conformation is where the judge looks over each of the animals to see how they compared to their breed and the other calves in the ring. It was here where the club shined, with five of the seven members placing in the top 10 of their classes:
Keegan Hill placed seventh with his winter calf, Paullyn Viral Starlyn;
Molly King took fourth with her winter calf, Nor Bella Elisium Eleanor;
Jason Watke placed fourth with his fall calf, Watdale Ashby Boom Lou;
Micaela Hill placed second with her fall calf, Elmhurst-QC J My Momma Said; and
Mackenzie Goetzs placed eighth with her summer yearling, Paullyn Viral Rysah.
After the show finished at 7 p.m., the tried calves were rewashed and loaded onto the trailers to make the trip back to their farms. With the results of the day the members are looking forward to the upcoming shows. Congratulations to all the members on their placings.
Troy McConnell, owner of Nor Bella Acres near Kincardine, in the heifer barn. McConnell gave members of the South Bruce Dairy Club a tour of his operation on Aug. 10.
(Submitted photo)
Barn tour
On Aug. 10, the club held their fifth meeting at Nor Bella Acres near Kincardine.
Troy McConnell, owner of Nor Bella Acres, led the club on the tour starting in the milking barn. Nor Bella Acres is a mostly Brown Swiss herd with a few Jerseys. When the farm was started in 1966, it was an all Holstein herd. Troy’s father, Norval McConnell, switched to the Brown Swiss after being introduced to them by his brother.
Brown Swiss are known for being more docile and having a higher fat and protein content in their milk than Holsteins. McConnell told the club that, with the genetic improvements over the years, Brown Swiss cows production has become competitive with the production of Holsteins. Nor Bella Acres milks 42 cows in a tie stall barn. Nor Bella Acres is a show farm, with six cows that have gone 95+ in classification.
McConnell explained to the club how, with their breeding program, they spent time building up their herd’s genetics, making small steady improvements instead of trying to make big changes with each breeding. Next the club followed McConnell to the heifer barn. The heifers are divided by age, except for the end pen which currently houses the older 4-H heifers.
The final stop was the calf barn. During the summer, the young calves live outside in hutches so the calf barn was pretty empty.
The club would like to thank Troy and Jaclyn McConnell for hosting the tour and providing a snack of ice cream cones.
