Where's the beef? Auxvasse!

Adler, left, and Grayson Kautsch hang out Friday with their Herefords at the Callaway Youth Expo. The 8-year-old twins competed together.
Adler, left, and Grayson Kautsch hang out Friday with their Herefords at the Callaway Youth Expo. The 8-year-old twins competed together.

AUXVASSE - Exhibitors in the breeding beef show Friday at the Callaway Youth Expo made up for lack of quantity with high quality.

Nearly every animal led around the ring at the Auxvasse Lions Club park met with praise from the judge. And despite the blazing sun, the competitors seemed perky and eager to show off the bovine results of their labor.

"This is the first time I've shown my own cow," said Camrey Green, 9, of Fulton, while waiting for her turn to show. "Her name is Stormy."

She said the Angus heifer is the daughter of her own first cow - who was a present from her grandfather when she was just 4. This is Camrey's third year showing cattle, and she loves it.

"It's fun showing them - you get to learn new stuff," she said. "And you're so happy seeing your cows because they're yours."

Camrey is at least a fifth-generation farmer - her great-great-great Grandpa Eastwood founded the Callaway County Angus Association, her mother, Becky Green, said. Camrey stored her grooming equipment in a trunk that formerly belonged to her grandmother, Barb Maupin, during her own 4-H days in the late 50's and early 60's.

"They learn a lot, they really do," Maupin said of 4-H participants. "They love their animals, and it teaches them some responsibility."

Camrey was just one of many area youths who gathered in Auxvasse this week for the annual Callaway Youth Expo. The event, put on jointly by FFA and 4-H, gives participants the chance to exhibit livestock they worked to raise and to demonstrate other skills, including livestock judging and public speaking. It ran Tuesday to Saturday, culminating in the annual livestock and ham sale Saturday evening.

The breeding beef shows Friday had a relatively narrow field of competitors, with several categories only featuring one entry. But those competitors brought their best, parading the often-stubborn beasts around the pavilion with patience and skill.

Clare Starkey, of Montgomery City, had taken champion in two classes by lunchtime: Maintainer heifer and shorthorn heifer. In total, she brought five animals to the expo this year.

"It was maybe a bit excessive," she admitted.

Now 20, Starkey has been showing cattle since she was just 8, starting with steers and moving up to breeding stock. She's now building her own herd and helping other youngsters get started showing.

"I like figuring out the pedigree, but I also like figuring out what's hot this year (in showing)," she said.

Right now, white cattle are trendy, she said.

"They're pretty, but they're hard to clean," she added. "I spend an hour and a half every morning washing mine."

She said she thinks the color, plus her heifers' excellent structure, buoyed her to success Friday.

Starkey only has another year or two in the ring - before long, she'll simply be breeding and selling cattle, rather than showing them. She encouraged young people to join 4-H or FFA.

"It teaches you a lot of patience and understanding that animals are animals," she said.

Claire Hudson, too, found success with her Hereford bull Red, who won champion in his class. Though the beefy animal balked at being led around the ring, Hudson's affection for the year-old bull was clear.

"When he was born, we carried him in out of the snow," Hudson said. "Now he acts like a dog."

Hudson said it's always hard to say goodbye to the steers each year, and she's glad Red will be sticking around to father the next generation of champion cattle. She said she was a bit surprised at her win.

"This is his first show, so I didn't know what to expect," she said.

The judge praised Red's heavy musculature and wide base.

Hudson, a resident of Mexico, has been showing for three or four years.

"(Cattle) can be crazy, but they can be so sweet," she said.