Wednesday, Jan. 10, FFA students attended the Travis County Youth Show, showing their livestock. At this Livestock show, students showed all animals: pigs, steers, lambs, and goats. Students showing pigs left yesterday, Feb. 5 for San Antonio and Kurville. Here are some of the stats on some of their animals from the last showing.
“Our last competition was about two weeks ago, we showed all the animals, pigs, steers, goats, and lambs,” Makaylah Nehring said. “I have a pig, Maybell. She is a Hamp and as of this week, she just weighed 253 pounds. She’s a really good pig, at my recent auction I got $1,600 plus add-ons from her and she hasn’t even been sold yet. All that earning was based on her placement and how she looks.”
Students raise these animals to either sell them or have them processed, but when it comes to them being sold the price these animals go for depends on the buyer.
“My Steer’s name is Beu-Duke and he’s a Charolais Cross, 1,340 pounds and eats 24 pounds of feed a day,” Travis Cykala said. “I’m not too sure how much he’d sell for it’s all up to the buyer’s decision. Although there have been bids placed on him, he’s gotten Reserve Champion Steer at Stoney Point and he got third in his class at county”.
Bids and add-ons placed on these animals all go to the students. The better the animal the better the bids are.
“I won Breed Champion American Steer,” Emylee Copeland said. “My steer weighs 1,275 pounds, he is a Simbrah Steer, his name is Mater he’s black and white and I got up to $5,000 on bids at TCYS”.
Students in FFA work hard and dedicate lots of time to the animals besides the beneficiary of their earnings. FFA is so much more than just the shows.
“I would say my favorite thing about FFA is the community and experience, it’s so much fun traveling with everybody and getting to make connections,” Nehring said.
