Conrad Weiser middle-schooler shows off showmanship at Farm Show

HARRISBURG – When 11-year-old Hailey Blatt leads her Angus heifer Beyonce into the livestock ring at the Pennsylvania Farm Show, the difference between the 100-pound Robesonia girl and the 1,500-pound animal is striking.

The heifer may be large, but Hailey’s in charge, a beef cattle showgirl guiding her black-and-white show heifer around the Small Arena, stopping and posing the animal – front legs together, back legs together – for the judge’s inspection.

It may look easy, but showmanship is an art, one that takes countless hours of work. Hailey spends hours after school and on weekends practicing with Beyonce – so named because she’s “sassy” – in a parking lot outside a chicken house on her family’s farm to make her control of the heifer look effortless.

“When she’s with me she is as calm as a dandelion,” said Hailey, a student at Conrad Weiser Middle School.

To honor the art of showmanship, the Farm Show held its first Master Showman Competition on Monday to crown the state’s best young market animal showman.

Ten contestants ages 10-20 – all winners and runners-up of Farm Show showmanship competitions among handlers of market steer, pigs, goats, sheep and rabbits – vied for the state title, a $250 gift certificate from an Ohio-based online shop for livestock show accessories and free use of a shiny silver 20-foot livestock trailer for a year. They also won the right to sell their animals at the show’s Sale of Champions auction today.

Contestants were required to show every species of animal, from stubborn steer to feisty rabbits. The winner, Heidi Barkley, 19, a market lamb showwoman from Bedford, wiped away tears after she accepted the first-place plaque from Agriculture Secretary Russell Redding.

The biggest challenge wasn’t handling a jumbo steer, but keeping a jumpy rabbit on a display table.

“I felt like I didn’t have any control over it,” Barkley said afterward. “It was just different.”

There are different strategies to handling different animals; you can gently but firmly place your knee against the breast of a sheep to keep it still, but not a steer, and a pig must keep moving while the goat must pose for the judge.

Unlike livestock competitions that judge an animal’s deliciousness, showmanship competitions judge the handler, not the animal, said Will Nichols, a spokesman for the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture and a former show cattle competitor.

Contestants are judged on their poise in the ring, their ability to move an animal and show the creature’s attributes. Appearance counts for 10 percent of each contestant’s score, and while most wear denim jeans, boots and tucked-in shirts in the ring, a few don some ring bling – rhinestone belts, silver belt buckles or earrings.

Showing farm animals takes hard work and dedication, and the kids who commit to it are most likely to remain in farming when they become adults, Nichols said.

“These are the kids who will be in the agriculture industry in 10, 15, 20 years,” he said.

Hailey, who won the showmanship competition at the 2018 Reading Fair, learned how to show Beyonce with help from her mother, Tammy, a 4-H competitor, and clinics held occasionally throughout the state.

Though Hailey did not qualify for the Master Showmanship contest, finishing third in her age group at the Farm Show, she plans to continue showing heifers, though not with her partner Beyonce.

Beyonce is pregnant, due to give birth in April and will no longer be a heifer, a female who has never given birth.

A new partner, Rebecca, waits in the wings.