You got that right roony, that's how the club lamb game is played these days. Plan on spending a couple grand for anything that has a chance to compete at the next level. The only people getting rich are those selling the lambs to these parents. In a nutshell, all to get into the State Fair 4-H auction that generates big $ corporate sponsorship for 4-H & if you win it all, the use of a new Featherlite trailer for a year which you have the option to purchase after the year is up. This system has brought about all kinds of fun and games, from feeding lambs liquid diets consisting of only electrolytes so they hold their weight for months, no hay or bedding, drugging, beating, icing, treadmills, & the list goes on. The current fad while showing market lambs is slapping the crap out of the topline to tighten it up. Watching the market lamb show last nite reminded me of a Three Stooges movie only it wasn't funny. A few years back, the fad was lifting the lamb's front end off the ground as high as you could by their necks then setting them down. After the show last nite, the kid's parents were washing the market lambs that had been shown. They were then treated for club lamb fungus (ringworm). Constantly keeping the lamb shorn to the skin as they do invites the fungus to infect them. Keeping some fleece on them helps prevent that. Did I mention the ringworm is also contagious to humans? This is just a PETA feature film looking for a place to happen. Not only that, the marketplace doesn't want anything to do with those lambs anymore. They've received too many complaints that the meat is tougher than a basketball and tastes about the same. Venture to guess that most of these kids and their families have never eaten lamb. If I raised lambs that way, I wouldn't either.
It's not only in MN, it's all over the country. However, some of the more prestigious shows are starting to crack down on the showring antics. Kudos to them. At the All American Jr. Show, the largest Jr. show in the country, where there are about 1900 kids and 4000 head of sheep between purebred and market animals, they instituted a 4-on-the-floor rule. The animal's feet must always be on the ground when you're setting them up in the showring. if you're caught lifting an animal's front feet off the ground by the neck, you get a warning. Do it again, you get tossed out of the show. Likewise if you're slapping the animal. No place for that garbage in a public exhibition.
In the meantime, the MN 4-H kid who raises & shows their own purebred stock from start to finish has no opportunity to earn big premium money from a sale or a crack at the free use of a trailer for a year. Those kids typically do chores every day, assist the ewes at birthing time, tag, vaccinate, dock the tails, help with shearing, feed the lambs as they were meant to be fed & do the work of washing, carding, fitting gaining nothing other than the satisfaction that they did the work themselves. They actually learned something besides Daddy has deep pockets. And the end product? Delicious. They know because their family actually eats it. This is what the 4-H sheep project was meant to be, not this club lamb charade that isn't representative of the US lamb and wool industry.
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