Cattle show legend draws a crowd

Anyone who has participated in the show cattle industry will likely know the name of Kirk Stierwalt. His reputation is legend in both Canada and the United States.

An article from The Show Times Magazine in 2010 described the Oklahoma native in great detail — cattle fitter, educator, judge.

“Kirk has many years of experience in the show cattle industry,” reads an excerpt. “He has won numerous awards at some of the most prestigious national and international shows.”

And while it’s been a few years since he brought his Steirwalt Cattle & Clinics demonstration to Brandon for the winter fair, he tours constantly.

So it was not surprising on April 1 to see a solid crowd of youth, parents and seniors watching Stierwalt work his magic with characteristic southern accent and a pair of bright pink clippers in the Flynn Arena during the Royal Manitoba Winter Fair in Brandon.

In a short conversation with the Brandon Sun on April 1, Stierwalt said he was always happy to return to Brandon and the Royal Manitoba Winter Fair.

“This fair is awesome,” Stierwalt said. “It’s just a neat fair that you don’t see everywhere.”

The following is an edited version of the question and answer session that followed.

MG: “What is the benefit of showing younger people how to handle show cattle?

KS: These kids work on these things every day, and it gets to be a thing of pride. But they also are competing for a placing. You know, hard work does pay off, and it does show up. You can tell the ones that’s been doing their daily routines and the ones that happen. You can just tell, like it could be something, that they’re under fed. You can tell that their hair coats not trained. You can tell that they’re not clean. It’s pretty easy to tell once you see one that’s been well taken care of. All of this deal is, is put a good, good animal in a good home.

We’re raising kids with livestock. That’s probably the most important thing. We’re using cattle as a vehicle to raise young adults, young people. And it teaches them that hard work pays off. And it also teaches them that to deal with disappointment, teaches them to deal with success, and then, unfortunately, sometimes it teaches them to deal with, you know, loss.

MG: What’s the one thing that they need to learn the most when they’re doing these kind of shows?

KS: They’ve got to learn that hard work pays off. And the problem is, when you’re out there doing it daily, you might not see that. You’re probably not going to see that, but where you’re going to see it most is when you go to the show and you and then you get against somebody that hasn’t been working, then it’s just like, ‘Yeah, my animal looks good. I’m proud of it. I’m glad I did that.’ But trying to make sure that they stay consistent and keep focused on the goal. You can make anything happen as long as you’re willing to put forth the effort. All I know is this, usually nothing in, nothing out, nothing in, usually wins nothing. The ones that don’t do anything, they probably get humbled at the show, because sometimes it can be kind of a hard pill to swallow.

MG: How long you’ve been doing this?

KS: Thirty-eight years, 38 years teaching clinics, yes, sir.

MG: Has anything changed?

KS: Everything. Everything from feeds to supplements to livestock trailers to aerosols and liquids and grooming supplies to clippers and blades and genetics — the genetics and the animals.

I mean, like, if you’d have told me when I was a kid showing that I could look at a bull in a magazine and breed it to my show after artificial inseminate and do some selective matings and stuff like that, yeah, I would have said you’d probably crazy, right?

Yes, everything’s changed. I mean, to me, but there again, for all that has changed, the goal still stays the same, that we’re raising kids with livestock. And a lot of these kids, not all of them, but there’s a section of them that is generational. And then those parents used to show, but guess what their parents used to show.

I’m talking about multiple generations that have been through the 4-H program. And so when you look at 4-H there again, it’s over 100 years old, and it’s over, and those are those are sustaining that because they’re solid and, I mean, they’re good, and they’re the, one of the few things that, to me, is still wholesome in this country, whether it’s yours or mine.

There’s a lot of those programs have went to the wayside. And I just feel like this one here (Royal Manitoba Winter Fair) is still solid, and it’s still has the same mission it did 100, I mean, 75 years ago, or whatever it is. It’s still … We’re making our kid work. And, you know, I mean, we’re raising kids with livestock there again, that’s why I do it.”

» mgoerzen@brandonsun.com

» Bluesky: @mattgoerzen.bsky. social