Samantha VanVorhis and Buckles were the team that couldn’t be beat at the Cattlemen’s Congress in Oklahoma earlier this month.
Bowling Green native VanVorhis and the beautiful black Angus heifer SS Envious Blackbird 5022, affectionately known as Buckles, won the Supreme Champion Junior Female honor at the prestigious cattle show in Oklahoma City.
The win was also somewhat of a surprise because Buckles is different for an Angus and for a show heifer, said VanVorhis, who is a freshman at Oklahoma State University in Stillwater.
Buckles’ ability to combine structural correctness with an elite look is hard, particularly for Angus to possess,” she explained. “But it’s her unique parts that set her apart.”
Where it all began
VanVorhis grew up in Wood County much like her father, whose family owned the local John Deere dealership for two generations. Her mother, a local attorney who is the current president of the Ohio Bar Association, also had an agriculture background. She was raised on a farm in Clark County where she showed cattle and sheep. Agriculture was in the younger VanVorhis’s DNA.
Her livestock-showing fate was determined when she was five years old. She loved her eight-year-old brother’s first steer project, cutely named J.D. for the family’s connection to John Deere. Though J.D. was her brother’s 4-H project, she jointly claimed the steer.
A week before the county fair, the steer stifled himself which meant J.D. was “going to the good old pasture up in the sky,” VanVorhis said. Her parents told only Marcus about the steer’s fate.
The heifer is one of the sweetest, most affectionate animals VanVorhis has owned. But the heifer also “has this spunk like, ‘you don’t want to mess with me,’” VanVorhis said. “When it’s time to get down to business, she goes in that ring and she’s almost on autopilot. But we operate really well as a team. I genuinely believe that she may be one of the best heifers I’ve ever shown.”
That’s a bold statement given the number of heifers she has shown since she was seven years old. “I’ve been fortunate to have shown some elite and unicorn-like creatures. She is just something special,” VanVorhis said.
On Saturday, VanVorhis reported she and Buckles recorded another national show honor. They won the Open Angus Show at the Fort Worth Stock Show and Rodeo.
Click here to read more bgindependentmedia.org
Photo Credit: gettyimages-livingimages
Categories: Ohio, Business, Livestock