The annual Blanco County Youth Stock Show was held Jan. 15-17 at the Blanco County Show Barn. As in years past, the event, featured a whopping 525 entries, was a smashing success, according to Keitha Johnson, the director of the Blanco County Youth Council.
The stock show’s live auction final tally topped $362,000. The dollars are down a bit from last year, but Johnson noted that the number of entries were also slightly lower.
“It went pretty smooth,” Johnson said. “We had a few hiccups along the way, but all in all it went well.”
Blanco’s Brock Nichols walked away with the Grand Champion Steer. The newspaper has an insert inside today’s edition with a rundown of the show’s winners.
For Johnson, as well as all those who make the massive annual event a reality, the youth livestock show is truly about teaching character, values and good ethical behavior to its student participants.
“This is a learning experience,” Johnson said. “It is a growing experience. These kids have invested hard work and dedication to their animals. As an example, if one of the students has taken on a steer, or even a goat, it is a yearlong project. They brought the animal home. They halter broke the animal. They taught it how to work in the show ring. You have to teach the animal to break and to push. It is something that these young people have invested long hours, time and effort into. Then they get to show it — to display the hard work they have done.”
Work builds character, Johnson said.
“As soon as you’re done, you’re thinking about next year’s project,” Johnson observed.
Johnson became active as an adult volunteer with Future Farmers of America and 4-H after watching a younger sister participate in the livestock show. The experience brought back a flood of memories from her youth when she took part in the youth livestock show.
“I grew up raising angora goats and pigs when I was a kid and that is what we showed,” Johnson recalled. “Now I raise boer goats in what is basically our backyard.”
The lessons Johnson learned have stayed with her throughout her life.
“It is the camaraderie and friendships you make, that is what is special about it,” Johnson said. “Those are always good lessons to learn.”
For Johnson, a successful stock show is simply “doing your best.”
“You want to put all your effort into it,” Johnson said. “We want to provide a good atmosphere for these young people to participate in. This is a community-wide event and we want everyone to enjoy themselves. We hope we are creating good learning process. It is gratifying to see these students become good citizens, wanting to come back and get involved in this process and be a part of the organization again as adults.”
Johnson said the true joy for the volunteers at the youth livestock show is watching the young participants as they experience the different facets imparted through the process, culminating in the auction.
“It is a lot of fun to watch those first time showers,” Johnson said. “They are always so excited the first time they go into the ring to show an animal. You can see it in their eyes that they want to come back and do it again.”
And so Blanco County will as well, in January of 2016.
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