Cattle.com

Exhibitors Want to Trust You as a Judge

There was an excellent article floating around last week about showing proper respect to the judges.

My only slight disagreement with it would be that the crazies who think the only good judges are the ones that pick them won’t care one bit about it.  They're going to criticize judges for anything they can find because they've gotten so focused on their own efforts that they can't comprehend a judge not appreciating that effort just as much.

The best strategy for shutting those guys up is proving them wrong by providing the one thing that every other exhibitor at a major wants from you as a major show judge.

They want to be able to trust you.

Why do people like Greiner?

He’s as big an outlier, at least for Texas major show judges, as you’ll find nowadays.  The big boys who preach that you should just buy the best calf and never buy one for a specific judge throw that advice out the window as soon as they hear he’s judging a major.  He likes big butts, big tops, and they may not be the soundest set of cattle in the world.

But you know that and you can trust him that he’s not going to suddenly change direction and decide the steer show should be judged like a heifer show. 

People like showing under him because they know that and they can trust him to pick a specific type of animal.  If you don’t like his type of cattle, you still know what you are expected to bring.  You can use that to make strategic decisions on animal selection and feeding throughout the year and go into the show knowing with a fair bit of confidence that your work has been toward the proper end.

Why do people like Mark Hoge?

They trust him that when they go into the ring, they will get a solid look and that he’s going to bust his tail making sure he takes the entire show seriously.

They know the year of work that went into that calf for 15 minutes in a show ring will be respected and if they don’t get picked, it will be because they didn’t have a calf that was good enough.

They don't worry that they won't be seen because he's feeling tired during their class or there are too many cattle in the ring.

When exhibitors can trust you that you will judge every calf in the ring in a consistent manner they’ll drown out the crazies that will never be satisfied.

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