KANSAS CITY SHOW IS ONE OF BIGGEST IN UNITED STATES

Otago Daily Times, Issue 27212, 15 October 1949, Page 2

KANSAS CITY SHOW IS ONE OF BIGGEST IN UNITED STATES

The Farm

The season of agricultural and pastoral shows begins in the South Island this month. In the United States of America, too, October marks the beginning of big live-stock shows. While it is springtime in New Zealand, it is autumn in America. One of the biggest and best-known of the American “ expositions ” is the Royal Live-stock and Horse Show, which is held throughout the third week in October at Kansas City, Missouri, in almost the geographical centre of the United States, on the dividing line between the rich Middle West and the vast plains.

For eight days and nights in October, when the autumn weather is usually sunny and brisk, Kansas City takes on an air of festivity and extends hospitality to the cattlemen, ranchers, livestock and horse breeders, and people from all over the United States who love beautiful horses and livestock and rich land. The show is of international importance; breeders, buyers and ranchers attend from Canada and Europe, and, in great numbers from Venezuela, Uruguay, .and Argentina and others of the American republics. Louis Bromfleld, American novelist, attended last year’s American Royal and wrote: “There was the pride and the beauty of the great Hereford and Angus ana Shorthorn bulls with their marcelled, spotless, shining coats, and the immense style and beauty of the big six-horse team of Clydesdales, drawing a packing-house wagon. “Most inspiring of all perhaps was the fantasy and beauty of the ‘ spotted horse’ class when there appeared under the brilliant lights of the arena, a score or more of pintos ridden by men and women in the costumes and saddles of the great days of the cattle drives, before the Spanish influence had waned on the great ranches of the South-west. The saddles were tooled

and mounted in pounds of shining silver and the horses were the descendants of the beautiful Arabians which Cortez brought from Spain three centuries ago. . . . Everywhere l , was colour and gaiety, beauty in the fat cattle and hogs, in the big handsome men and the women dressed by the great dressmakers of New York and Paris. There were the narrow-hipped cowboys of the high mountain grazing country, and the chic and style of the women who drove the traps behind the high-stepping beautiful horses in the horse show.

Spectators at the American Royal get an unusual sense of actual participation as the year’s royalty among cattle, sheep and pigs are selected by the judges. Contrary to the custom at most shows, the spectators are permitted in the centre of the arena while the livestock judging is in progress, and the tanbark is crowded with onlookers, exhibitors, judges and animals. Judging goes on simultaneously in

every part of the arena. Spectators also are admitted " behind the scenes ” in the stalls and pens where the prize Animals are fed and curried and brushed and showered and curled. Attendants sleep alongside their animals, in tents made up m colours designating the animal owners, and decorated with prize ribbons and other awards of former years. More than 6000 meat animals were entered in the American Royal in 1947, as well as 800 of the top show horses of the United States. The prizes offered totalled 175,000 dollars. Members of the future. Farmers of America and the 4-H clubs (made up of farm bovs and girls) entered 18ou steers in the 1947 shows. A junior farmer owned the steer which established a world record when it brought more than 43,000 dollars at auction in 1945.