Alix Pearson- The Art of Fitting

T he Art of Fitting

In my previous blog, I touch on the basics of showing. I hope it wasn’t too overwhelming for everybody! It will get better, I promise. I talked a lot of “fitting” a show animal as well. Fitting is one of the most important things when it comes to showing livestock. If you are in a really competitive class, and the judge is having a hard time deciding on different animals, most of the time the deciding factor is either the fit job, showmanship, or usually a combination of the two. So, fit job came make or break a placing, making it supper important.

In this entry I am mainly going to touch on fitting breeding sheep because that is what I know the most about. But I will also mention the basics of fitting cattle and market sheep. But like I said breeding sheep is my strong suit. So after reading this, everybody will be able to go out and fit their own animal!

First things first, after picking out which animals are going to be a part of your show string, is cut them out. This happens about a month or two before show season. This is when we shear down the wool to get a ni

ce square pattern on the animal so there isn’t as much wool to work with when it comes to carding and hand sheering. The pattern we are looking for is: closely cut down on the neck and chest, level square top, level side, indent at the hip, and then fade out, full rear end, and bare belly and legs. It is very important to get the right pattern right away because if you take too much wool off, you are screwed, and not enough, it is a lot of work by hand. This is the start to a perfect fit job.

[endif]--Next is washing. As I have mentioned before make sure you know which breed you have. Why? Because you DO NOT wash wool breed sheep. Suffolk’s are meat breed so we are in the clear. When washing it is very important to get them clean, clean, clean. Did I say that enough? They reason why is because if they aren’t clean, they don’t look as nice and also, it makes it way harder to card (which I will get into). We use special purple shampoo to get them clean. You want to wash them a couple days before show day so you have enough time to fit on them. After we as them we wash is it time to curry and card them. When you curry comb a sheep, it is a tool we use to “rake” the excess water out of the wool. You start at the top and pull down so the water comes out. After curry combing so it is almost d

ry, it is time to card. Just a little side note, a person is never done carding, you could card for hours and hours and still not be done. Anyways, carding is the process of getting all of the kinks out of the wool and making it smooth. Not indents of rivets, nothing. The reason why you want them super clean for carding is because if the animal is dirty it is hard to get the kinks out and the wool doesn’t place nicely. A card is kind of like a brush it has a handle and a big square head and bristles. But instead of the bristles being soft they are pokey at the end to help pull the kinks out. When carding you hold the handle, push the head of the card in the wool and the pull out at an angle. Think of it as a human combing the tangles out of their hair. It is just like that. Once the first carding is done, we put a blanket on them the keep them clean for show day and are done for the night

[endif]--Now, onto the “art” of it. After washing them, the next day we will put them back on the stand to really fit. First thing we do, want to guess? You got it, we card all the wool up so it looks like a little fluff ball. After that, we will take our han

d shear and cut all that wool off. It is important to keep your hand steady and cut straight so there aren’t any waves. Once you get all the wool cut off, we will use a spray bottle to get it wet, card it up again, but only a little, we don’t pull at this time because all the kinks show be out by now. This card up is just to get the uneven wool up. Once that is carded up, we hand shears again and cut it again. That is the final time for that as well. Once we are done with the hand shears, we will take a spray bottle with half water, half white paint and spray it down good. I’m sure you are thinking, why paint!? It is just to hold the fit job together till show day. Once the sheep is sprayed down, time to back card. Which is simply taking the card and just patting the wool down and the spray into the wool. Finally all done! Put the blanket back on and time to wait to show. A couple of things. Fitting a sheep takes my family 1 hour for each head of sheep, but we also have three people working on it. So it takes a lot of time and concentration. It is very important. And also to make sure you have a great fit job, fit the day before the show, so it holds and it still looks fresh and clean.

There! Now everybody can go out and fit a breeding sheep, simple as that! Just remember, carding is the most important thing to do. Now I’m just going to touch on the others since I don’t know that much, But I will show pictures of do’s and don’ts. For market lambs: shear all of their wool off to the skin and the “buff up the legs” which means card the wool on their legs out so they look like they have more bone. For market hogs, just shear them down using 1 ¼ inch blade. And cattle, now fitting a steer and a heifer is an art form. All the fitting done for cattle, besides their “cut-out” (which isn’t the same as sheep), is done the day of the show. Since I have never fit cattle I will show a final product of every animal:

Breeding sheep Market Lamb

Market Hog Market Steer

As you can see a good fit job is important and also, it is what make that the animals look pretty. A good fit job keeps attracting the judge’s eye because they look so good. But the important thing about fitting, just like if you want to be good at anything else, you have to practice. It doesn’t just happen the first couple of times you do it, it takes a while to get comfortable with it and then become a good fitter. That is all I have for fitting right now. Until next time!

Photos:

1. Sheep Card

https://www.sullivansupply.com/cart/tx/p-967-howard-bros-tuffer-wool-card-4.aspx

2. Curry Comb

http://www.jefferspet.com/products/rev-curry-comb

3. Hand Shears

https://www.sullivansupply.com/cart/tx/p-398-bbn-sheep-shears-rigged.aspx

4. Market Lamb

https://www.google.com/search?q=market+hogs&espv=2&biw=950&bih=958&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa= X&ved=0ahUKEwjxx4fSyJ_JAhVB8CYKHeaNBQ0Q_AUIBigB#imgrc=E4-e55oNRg1QaM%3A

5. Market Hog

https://www.google.com/search?q=market+hogs&espv=2&biw=950&bih=958&source=lnms&tbm=i sch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjxx4fSyJ_JAhVB8CYKHeaNBQ0Q_AUIBigB#tbm=isch&q=market+lambs&imgrc=lio-PRznlLghSM%3A

6. Market Steer

https://www.google.com/search?q=market+hogs&espv=2&biw=950&bih=958&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=

X&ved=0ahUKEwjxx4fSyJ_JAhVB8CYKHeaNBQ0Q_AUIBigB#tbm=isch&q=market+steer&imgrc=cRZGbThlzMrC1M%3A

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