Thursday, August 23, 1923
Last week was fair. The county fair was held and a great number of thousands came in cars and beheld many curious things. The farmers turned out in great force, and they brought fine examples of the art of husbandry and that impressed me more than anything else for the great herds of stock that come from afar have discouraged the local herder and the prizes for registered stock went mostly to men from other counties and states…
I am always interested in the Four-H calf club, and the usual bunch of tenderly cared for heifers were in the competition each with the young owner. The calf and the youngster become violently attached to each other and do not like to be parted as they generally are at these yearly stock sales. Like the time our family sold Marie Antoinette to the local butcher shop and were afraid to eat beef for a month.
I stood looking at these Four-H calves and remarked that they had been coddled and kept like babies, when an old gal about my age said, “humph, bettern babies.”
After being considerably interested in the manner of caring for a beast that could get to be as big as these heifers in a year, I scraped up an acquaintance with Miss Virginia Hayes, of Mill Point, eleven years old, and student of the fourth grade. Her father and mother were with her, and I interviewed her as one of the successful calf project owners.
Each year, the Hereford Association puts out a certain number of Hereford-white faced calves and the youngsters keep them a year and sell them at the annual fair. Virginia’s calf was turned over to her weighing 380 pounds, and she cared for it for 322 days and brought it to the judging when it weighed 855 pounds, having put on an average of about a pound and a half a day. It was fed molasses, apples, oats, bran, corn and cottonseed meal, ensilage, timothy and clover hay. Some small amount of salt was given each time it was fed…
She gave it as her opinion that care counted for more than food in fattening a head of stock. In her case, she had thought out some things, such as keeping the beast in a dark stall in daytime when the flies were bad and regulated the light by having a window cut in the box stall. She also invented a plan to fight flies. She hung burlap curtains down so that the calf could brush the flies off. In fly time, she let the calf graze at night. Virginia did not get a first, but the next time I saw her she had ribbons on a plenty, and she was towing her gigantic pet around the main track in the grand parade, in the same adequate way that a tug takes a great liner out of the harbor in New York.
Rev. H. W. McLaughlin’s International Champion bull, Royal Choice Sultan, in all the pride and glory of his 2,500 pounds was present. They have well nigh bred all the legs and neck off of this great specimen. In addition to the pride of flesh, I believe he is intelligent. On the judging ground, he commences to talk in a dignified and self-contained way like the mutterings of thunder and keeps it up until the adjournment of the judging of his class, when he is led to his apartment and never utters a word until he comes again upon the stage for the next event… Royal Sultan is known all over the world and his calves are spreading the doctrine of polled shorthorns in all the foreign fields. In short, I think he is the best ox I ever saw, not excluding Marie Antoinette who was as pretty as a picture, but as mean as gar broth.
There was one feature about this meeting and that was the absence of all signs of liquor drinking. There has never been such a crowd together in this county for the length of time that this affair lasted, and not a drunk man seen so far as reported. This is due largely to the recent law making drinking a crime, and where there are no customers, it is no use to bring booze and that seems to do the work…
The fair has become a great institution since Edgar McLaughlin started it at Hillsboro some years ago…
On the whole it gives a zest and sustaining interest in life.