Blue Ribbon Lambs

Jami Parsons, standing in wood chips and lime dust, hooks her fingers around her 300-pound, waist-high Dorset lamb’s ear and turns the docile animal toward spectators circling the show ring. She makes sure the lamb’s back is straight, head is up, and muscles are taut.

Jami talks low to her lamb and tickles its chin as she eyes the Missouri State Fair livestock judge who carefully inspects each lamb. If the judge slaps her lamb’s rump—indicating the winner—Jami will add another trophy to her collection.

She’s won a few and lost a few more in countless show rings, but Jami’s dedication to her lambs, competition, and 4-H has persisted for 11 of her 16 years.

“I like sheep,” Jami says. “They’re animals of routine. Once you teach them, you can control them with your hands … and they don’t kick.”

Missouri’s state fair, which runs Aug. 9-19, is more than just an event to Jami and her family—parents Donnie and Laura Parsons and brother Kenton, 11. The Parsonses have vacationed at the state fair since Jami was old enough to join 4-H. Each year, they leave their home in Shelbyville, a community of nearly 700 in northeast Missouri, and caravan (Mom drives the motor home; Dad hauls the sheep) for four hours to the state fair in Sedalia.

Getting ready

The Missouri State Fair caps a four-month show season for Jami and her family. Between weekly washings and grooming required by competition, the sheep live sheltered lives in shaded lean-tos and clean straw. The Parsonses enter local fairs or shows three times a week, so by the state fair finale the animals know the routine, clamoring into the trailer on cue.

Tending the animals is a family affair during the school year. Donnie feeds before work, and Jami and Kenton help vaccinate, dock tails, and trim hooves after school and on weekends.

“But when school’s out, we do the chores,” Jami says. She and Kenton feed the lambs a high-protein diet and walk them daily in a 1-mile loop down their lane, across the road, and to a neighbor’s yard.

Jami’s interest in sheep carries on a family tradition, of sorts; her father, as a child, adopted an orphaned lamb, Patsy Jane, from his father’s flock. “We were together a lot,” Donnie recalls. “I could turn her loose, and she’d follow me around.”

Jami also took to animals at a young age, and, at 5, chose to show the gentle lambs rather than unruly pigs or large steers. Walking her lamb around the show ring thrilled her as a kindergartner.

“I was too young to understand what was really going on,” Jami says with a smile. “I thought I won every time.”

“She’d come out of the ring saying, ‘I won! I won! Can you believe it?’” her mother recalls. “I’d just say, ‘No, I can’t&Mac226;’ because she finished last.”

But young Jami eventually began winning in “lead line” competitions, where contestants are judged on their own poise and control in the ring, their lamb’s characteristics and appearance, and their show outfit, which must be made of wool. Jami’s mother sewed her competition apparel.

Now, her bedroom shelves and walls are lined with 28 trophies and 27 plaques. Since Jami’s first win in 1990, she’s won the 1994 Junior Division Sho-Me Lead Line; the state fair’s 4-H 1997 Sheep Showmanship; the 1998 Champion Dorset Wether and Market Lamb; and the 1999 Champion Dorset Ram. She’s also placed in numerous lead line events and judging competitions.

“Jami’s a pretty outstanding young lady. She sets goals and does what she needs to get there,” says Don Nicholson, a 4-H extension agent. “She’s successful because of her hard work and being in the right place and right time.”

At the fair

Once they arrive at the state fair, the Parsonses initially skip the Coliseum, the majestic brick-and-wood arena that has landmarked the fair since 1904. They drive past Lefty’s Country Skillet and concessions advertising lemon drinks and corn dogs, and circle up with two dozen Future Farmers of America and 4-H families for a week of camaraderie.

“We have a buffet table in the center of the campers,” Jami says. “Mom will cook spaghetti, then someone cooks something else. We’ll have tacos, stir-fry, and barbecue.”

Grandstand entertainment and Ferris wheels wait until feed is unloaded and registration completed. Jami, who had planned to enter eight offspring from the Parsons’ flock of 60 ewes, will register her sheeps’ papers and health certificates with more than 900 other 4-H sheep entries.

With market lambs weighed in, Jami will wash her Dorsets one last time. Though she and her father clipped their wool to a scant half-inch, it must dry for two days.

Last-minute grooming is essential. “We spray the Dorsets with a water bottle and card them up. That teases the wool and fluffs it out,” Jami says. “We use old-time hand shearers to smooth it. Each sheep takes an hour—all for 15 minutes in the ring.” She protects her lambs’ wool from dust with a hooded blanket.

Kenton and Laura, meanwhile, head for the hog barn where Kenton will scrub his show hogs.

“This is something we do together as a family,” Laura says. While the Parsons children maneuver animals through daylong competitions, their parents make last-minute checks on the next entrant. With walkie-talkies, they track Jami and Kenton’s show schedules, dashing through crowds and machinery exhibits to see them compete.

After 11 years under competitive scrutiny in the ring, Jami has developed perspective on winning state fair gold, silver, or bronze prizes.

“It’s just one person’s opinion,” she says. “You can go from the top to the bottom or the bottom to the top the very next time you show.

“It also depends on who I lose to. Last year I stood second in three classes, and the people who beat me buy and show on the national circuit. Losing to a national winner doesn’t hurt my feelings at all.”

Such mature sentiments are just part of the benefits her children have reaped from raising and showing animals, Laura says. “The kids gain self-confidence by being in front of people,” she says.“(And) the friendships they form will last a lifetime.”

Vicki Cox is a freelance writer in Lebanon, Mo.

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