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You know, the State Fair is always a big time for me. It's a lot of fun, and I particularly
love seeing all the livestock. Let's take a look at what one young lady does to get
her sheep ready for the big show. My name is Autumn Gregg, and we're getting this ewe
ready to go State Fair. The first thing that I have to do is wash her, and the hardest
part of washing her is going to get all the mud off of her. Oh, I just use regular dish
soap and water. After I get her clean, I have to shear off all her wool so that you can
just see her muscles. I will shear off until it's about a 1/4 of an inch. It's important
that it's sheared. That way, when the judge goes up to judge her, he can see all her muscles
and get an accurate feel of what she's like. It's important that she's clean before we
shear her, because if she's not clean, the clipper blades won't clip as well. We are
off to the clipping stand so that she can lose all her wool. That's a good girl. She
did cooperate earlier, and she's not now. This just keeps their head in place while
I clip her. That way, she doesn't run away, but it doesn't hurt her at all. The black
and white is just a breed thing. She is a cross between a Hampshire and a Suffolk. So
I've got her washed and sheared, and now we gotta just load her up. Here you go. It's
really important to have everything I need because it's such a far drive and we don't
wanna forget anything. Now that I'm at the fair, I have to get the pens ready so that
way the sheep can have their pens and lay down and get settled. The judges look for
fluffed up heads and that they're clean and nice and white. Watch out, girlie. So what
I'm gonna do now is I'm just gonna put a layer straw down, another layer, because we've gotten
them cleaner than they were at the house. So we just wanna keep them clean. And they're
gonna eat on it a little bit, but it won't hurt them. It has to be fluffy because of
their breed and it's just part of what the breed requires for them to do. Honestly, I
don't really know who thought of "Oh, let's have it fluffy," but someone did, so now we
have to do it. It gets them used to people touching them and that kind of thing. This
is called a card, and I don't know why, but it is. The first time I'll card it out and
when it's really nice, it's more just like brushing. But when you first start it's more
like picking -- it's very tangly. This is a soap and water mixture. And she just had
a spot right here, so I'm just gonna spray it and clean it off. We're going to come out
and line up like they are right now. And just the judge is gonna go through and feel each
one of them. He's gonna walk through and check their fronts and check their teeth to make
sure they have all their teeth and everything. And then we're gonna walk around like they're
doing right now. We're gonna pull up where the judge can see the side of them. He'll
look at them again. He may feel them again. He's walk all the way around them again. And
then he will go through and he'll place each one and he'll put you in the order he wants
you to go. On mine, he'll be feeling for how much meat they have around the hip. He'll
be feeling for how long they are and how much fat they have, because you don't want a lot
of fat on them. My breed is a meat breed, what's called a meat bread, and they're gonna
go out and what they're designed to do is for butcher. I'm actually really excited.
I'm ready to go out there and show. I'm ready to see how they're gonna do. Congratulations,
nice set of sheep. Thanks. The Arkansas Champions are really good. It means I was the best one
in Arkansas. I had some competition, and the competition was really good and they did really
good today. They showed really good.