Growing up on a dairy farm, one would think a boy eight years of age would TOTALLY be in to hanging out at the barn every day, helping Dad feed and just being your normal all around farm boy....but Bryce has always been, {thus far} into technology more than anything else. Anything computerized, robotized {is that even a word?}, or something he can create with technology has been his 'thing.' So I was ecstatic when he informed me and his Dad that he wanted to show a calf in the fair this year.
At 8 years of age you are allowed to show a calf in the fair as a 'Special Junior'...otherwise 9 is the showing age. We expose the kids to all aspects of dairy farm life but never pressure our kids to become involved with the animals, figuring if it's their passion or even just something they may want to try, it's our pleasure to help them when they ask. I think Bryce, watching his older cousin, Gavin, show in the fairs the past few years has really inspired him to want to participate with his own animals.
Yesterday, Martin Luther King Day, the kids had the day off school and it was time to begin halter training the calves in preparation for the county fair to be held in June.
Meet Jinx.
Dominic normally names the calves when they're born, unless one of the kids is going to show them or they happen to be in the barn after a new calf is born and want to name her. Jinx's mother is named Jennifer {I'm thinking an ex-girlfriend}, when calves are born, they are named with the same first letter as their mother's name so Bryce needed to come up with a name beginning with the letter 'J' to enter on the registration papers and he decided upon "Jinx".
