With the county fair kicking off this Wednesday, many of the kids in Winnebago County are putting the final touches on the projects they’re bringing to the fair, whether that be animals, woodworking, photography, or anything else they’ve been working on.
For Finn and Marit Lettau of Winchester 4-H Club, it’s been the same. The two are bringing a variety of projects they’ve been working hard on since this past spring. For example, Finn was explaining that he’s bringing chickens, a duck, a rabbit, pigs, vegetables, and his favorite one, the goats along with a few other projects. While Marit’s showing her dog, which is more of an obedience show, and for the first time she’s bringing dairy.
Finn explained that one of the biggest things on their to-do list prior to the fair is making sure the animals are all groomed nice. Marit brought up the fact that there’s more to getting everything prepared for the fair than people realize. “If you just grab an animal and take it to the fair, you’re probably not going to know, for showmanship, the parts of the animal, you’re probably not going to know how to show the animal,” Marit said. Her whole point was that if you plan to show, you have to be willing to put the time and effort into it because otherwise, you can tell who worked with their animals and who didn’t.
No matter what animal you’re showing at the fair, Finn warned others showing that you need to make sure to study the different parts of the animal. For meat animals, try to memorize where each cut of meat comes from, and for other projects, make sure to know everything possible about the animal for showmanship.
As far as the overall show schedule goes for the Winnebago County Fair, dairy shows on Wednesday, beef, sheep, and goats are shown on Thursday, and then pigs are on Friday. For the long-form judging schedule, click here. You can listen to the full interview with Finn and Marit on our podcast page.
Happy fair week!
