For many 4-H members, achievement day is a triumphant yet tearful event as youngsters say goodbye to the animals they have grown to love.
“Livestock is so hard because you have to name it and you have to feed it and lead it around and then you have to sell it and you know it is going to be slaughtered,” said Debby Dobko, leader of the Irricana Multi 4-H club in Irricana, Alta.
Her club had a good day recently at 4-H on Parade in Calgary, where it was named steer club of the year for the third straight year and received $400. It also contributed the grand and reserve champion steers, reserve champion market lamb and numerous class winners.
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Dobko said her 39-member group is a hard working club with an average age of 11.
Calgary hosts one of the country’s largest 4-H weekends, offering a larger competition and richer sale than individual club achievement days. Nearly 200 steers and 75 lambs were entered in Calgary, which also included a dog show and photography and horsemanship categories.
For 17-year-old Brittney Verbeek of Beiseker, Alta., her grand champion steer, Dark Knight, was a good way to finish her 4-H career. Her black Angus cross steer has won at other shows this spring.
She also won the reserve supreme purebred female with a red Angus pair. The steer sold for $5.25 a pound to the Calgary Stampede.
Verbeek said it would be hard to let the steer go after being a part of her life for nearly a year.
“When I tie him up, it will be tough.”
Hal Nixdorff, Verbeek’s friend and Beiseker High School classmate, won the reserve champion with a Hereford cross steer.
Nixdorff has spent his career competing against Verbeek. He is also up against his brother, Adam, who won the intermediate steer champion and the grand champion Hereford female.
Like Verbeek, Nixdorff is also graduating from high school this year and plans to study engineering at the University of Alberta this fall. His steer was a home-raised calf out of his 4-H cow.
He plans to enter it in the Calgary Stampede steer classic before turning it over to its new owners, Cam Clark Ford of Airdrie, Alta., which paid $4.25 a pound.
“I started working with this one a year ago,” Nixdorff said, admitting the final goodbye will be hard.
Nixdorff is also vice-president of the Alberta Junior Hereford Association and won all his classes last summer at Bonanza, a national junior event held in Medicine Hat, Alta.
Sarah Campbell of the Foothills 4-H sheep club won the grand champion market lamb. It sold for $7.75 per lb. to the Calgary Stampede.
Cole McCallam of the Irricana club had the reserve lamb, which sold for $8 per lb. to Merv McCallum of Standard, Alta.
The grand champion pen of three market lambs was raised by James Ritchie, and all three sold to Red Deer Meat Processing in Calgary for $4.50 per lb.
Mackenzie Scott of the Irricana club won the reserve pen of three, which sold to Bushfield Farms of Airdrie for $5.40 per lb.
The charity steer raised by Millarville-Stockland 4-H beef club donated the proceeds to the Alberta Shock Trauma Air Rescue Society. Encana bought it for $8 per lb., and $9,800 will be donated to STARS.
The charity lamb came from the Standard Sheep Club, which sold for $22 a lb. to Rod McLeod of Balzac Meats. Proceeds will be donated to the Alberta Children’s Hospital.
