Listen up, urban dwellers.
The Ohio State Fair opens today in Columbus, so here’s your chance to pretend you know a thing or two about agriculture.
To help out, we’re offering a brief cattle primer to help you sort Holsteins from Herefords.
Lesson No. 1: Beef cattle are raised for meat, and dairy cattle for milk. Their bodies give you a pretty good clue which kind is which.
“It’s like the difference between a big wrestler or football player and a cross-country runner,” said John King, beef-cattle director for the fair.
Beef cattle are, well, beefy: bulky and muscular, with thick legs and necks.
“A beef animal is designed to raise a calf that can be turned into strip steak,” King said. “God put them on this earth to convert grass to meat products, as opposed to dairy cows, which God put on earth to make milk and cheese and ice cream.”
Some beef cattle have exotic-sounding names — Maine-Anjou, Gelbvieh, Chianina — because they came from France, Germany and Italy. But the Spanish-sounding Santa Gertrudis breed was home-grown in Texas on the King Ranch. Its name came from the Spanish land-grant property the ranch was on.
Dairy cattle are daintier than beef cattle, with thinner faces and thighs, large udders and bigger hip bones. Their back ends are on the bony side.
Ohio has 272,000 dairy cows living on more than 3,200 farms and producing more than 600 million gallons of milk each year, making the state 11th in the country in dairy production.
Lesson No. 2: Whether dairy or beef, each type of cattle comes in a variety of color variations that can sometimes help decipher which breed is which.
While many dairy breeds are distinctive in appearance, beef breeds often aren’t, King said.
“They look a lot the same, because many have been crossbred to pick up the best characteristics,” he said. “Many of our cattle are black, and unless you know breed characteristics, you can’t sort them out.”
Nine beef breeds, about 1,000 animals in all, will be at the fair. The most common are Angus and Simmental.
Angus are black, short-legged and small-framed, while Simmental have pale-gold to dark-red spotted bodies with white or straw-colored faces.
On the dairy side, Holsteins are the most common and the breed most people equate with milkers. They came from the Netherlands and have black and white blotchy markings.
Jerseys have a well-known profile, too. They are caramel-colored with large eyes and were made famous by Borden’s trademark, Elsie the cow. Their claim to fame is high-fat milk, perfect for making cheese.
Angie Kaverman, the fair’s dairy-cattle director, said about 1,000 animals representing seven breeds will be at the fair.
Lesson No. 3: Don’t be afraid to ask farmers about their cattle at the fair.
They’ve brought their best, and they’re generally happy to answer questions for even the slickest of city slickers.
The cattle are housed in the Gilligan Complex and the Voinovich Livestock Center on the fairgrounds, and many will stay for the entire 12 days of the fair.
Adults and their cattle will compete for prizes according to breed in open competitions. Youths will show cattle in the Junior Fair.