RBC |Six years into his 4-H career, Spencer Gates, 14, of Meeker, has taken home the title of Grand Champion for market, breeding and showmanship of goats.
Gates described his winning goat “Al” as an “up-and-comer.”
“He did not look like a show winner when he was born whatsoever. He looked like one that we would just take to the sale barn in October,” said Gates.
But Gates and his family decided to give Al a chance anyways, and soon after the not so likely Boer goat started winning.
“I’ve just seen him grow up from something that wasn’t very good to something that is tremendous,” said Gates.
Gates showed pigs in his first year at 4-H, but he soon switched over to goats, and has stuck with the species ever since. With each successive year, he said his confidence has grown.
“I’ve learned how to work with others, gained patience, I’ve just learned a lot of work ethic because of the time and effort you have to put into these animals.”
“Every single year you learn more and more about an animal, and about what is good and bad about animals, and how they’re built,” Gates said.
The lessons learned in 4-H apply to more than animals and livestock shows. Gates said he sees a lot of similarities when it comes to schoolwork.
“It’s kind of the same thing when it comes to the level of work, just physical versus mental type deal. Both are very alike, you have to work hard and then you get great results.”
Gates has received advice and mentoring from a bunch of people, but he gives most of the credit to his parents, Ty and Rachel, for teaching him about showing and raising goats.
Gates also has his own sort of competitive advantage, thanks to working alongside his brother Nick, who also shows goats and took home the title of Grand Champion last year.
“The judge last year at county fair said he (Nick) was the best showman that showed goats that day. That kind of made me a little mad myself just because, you know, the brotherly competition thing.”
“Nick and I, we both wanna beat each other, but we also don’t want to see each other fail. I hate losing to him, but we still want each other to win, if that makes sense.”
“At home we are always talking about the goats, who’s the better goat, who’s the better showman. We always will go back and forth about that, all the time,” he said.
This year, the win went to Spencer. He said it feels great to see the result of all that hard work.
“I feel the joy come out of it, and it almost is like a flashback in my head because of all the hard work that we have put in at the house finally pays off when you go to these shows and win.”
“It’s not cheap by any means, so we have to almost rely on winning, especially when you get to be a bigger level and you’re trying to be a state and national champion, it definitely gets pricey,” said Gates.
Money, price, patience and/or brotherly competition aside, the process is about more than just winning for Gates, who said he plans to pursue a career working with animals.
“I want to raise these animals when I’m out of college. I want to raise them and become a vet actually and do the AIs [artificial inseminations], the laparoscopic AIs and the embryo transplant flushes. Just so I don’t have to pay other people to do them and so I can get paid to do them for others. And kinda make a career out of that.”
Next week Gates travels to Pueblo for the Colorado State Fair.
“I’m so excited because this is gonna be our first year that we’ve gone to state fair,” Gates said.
LUCAS TURNER | [email protected]
