Future farmers | Teenage winners honour family heritage while working toward their own futures
A world class show like the Calgary Stampede often brings out the best in the livestock world.
This year, a group of high achieving teenagers won the big prizes with their beef cattle. The beef business has been part of their lives since they were born and many were showing cattle before they started school.
Kathryn Dolliver of Stettler, Alta., was a major winner. She had the grand champion market heifer and reserve grand champion junior steer and the supreme champion purebred cow at Summer Synergy, all of which netted her thousands of dollars in cash prizes and a $1,000 scholarship.
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Most of her week was spent at Summer Synergy, a partnership between the Stampede and the Olds Agricultural Society to showcase dairy and beef cattle and host the provincial 4-H sheep show.
A serious, quiet girl, Dolliver said all her extra time is devoted to her cattle and building her herd. Her champion heifer was the first female she bought with money she had earned from past shows.
Dolliver said she has learned independence and the value of dedication.
“I like to do my own work with them so they get used to me,” she said.
At 15, she has had an extensive show career, which started when she was little as a means to gain self confidence. Her ambition is to become a veterinarian.
Seventeen-year-old Chase Miller had the supreme champion commercial female at Summer Synergy with a Maintainer calf at foot.
The Maintainer female was bought as a youngster from Kansas. The Synergy show was its first time out and was judged as the most feminine of the class.
Miller’s family, who lives near Cremona, Alta., raises Maintainers, which are a cross between Maine Anjou and any other cattle.
His father is a veterinarian with an extensive embryo transfer practice. The teenager decided to start his own business, Chase Show Cattle, two years ago and now has 17 show steers for sale.
“It is my planning, my breeding selection and I am the one out there doing the work in the morning and getting the show cattle ready,” he said.
“The point of me bringing her out was to sell genetics off this cow.”
He won cash prizes for the supreme cow and a $1,000 scholarship.
Show steers are becoming a popular business, in which breeders seek out the top sires using artificial insemination to create a perfect animal that not only looks good but produces high quality beef. Miller’s entry to the Stampede steer classic two years ago won the carcass competition with a quality grade of Prime 60.
The Calgary Stampede attracted 1.1 million visitors this year despite floods that ravaged the city and area.
At the steer show, Riley Chalack of Carstairs, won the Stampede Steer Classic. The Maine Anjou cross earned $10,000 for him and his partners, Curtis Flewelling, Royden Anderson and Logan Chalack.
He and Anderson bought the steer as a calf and worked with it this spring using a special feed ration. They started by entering smaller shows, but Chalack said he felt some trepidation when he walked into the ring at the Stampede and checked out the competition. However, he figured his chances of placing high were good.
“Today I was more nervous than anything,” he said.
He finished high school this year and plans to work on his family’s mixed farm and build a show steer business with Anderson.
The reserve grand champion steer at the Stampede show was a straight-bred Hereford from the Brost Bros. operation at Irvine, Alta.
Nicona Brost raised the steer as part of her 4-H project. It was sold for $4,600 to Perry Deering of Deerview Meats in Medicine Hat., after winning the Medicine Hat 4-H division show. The new owners agreed the steer should go to the Stampede steer show.
“My living is buying good carcass cattle. I picked that calf as one of the best calves out of Medicine Hat and then we brought him up here and obviously he is,” said Deering.
Flewelling Cattle Co. and Logan Chalack are also owners who helped prepare the 1,400 pound steer for the show. The $4,000 prize money will be split among the owners.
“As for the money, I don’t even care,” Nicona said.
For her father, Blaine Brost, the win was a vindication.
“The Hereford cattle have taken a lot of knocking for the last 15 years and we have been building up steam and our cattle are getting better over the years. This is going to help push them back to where we were 30 years ago,” he said.
Nicona, 17, was pleased to see a home-raised steer achieve so much. It is her biggest win and was a good farewell because she is retiring from 4-H this year to pursue a post secondary education.
Unlike some of the other competitors, she did not show her steer extensively because she also had to devote time to being the rodeo queen in Maple Creek, Sask.
