Cooke County Junior Livestock Show: Bloodstock Agent Writes Goats a Pedigree
Gainesville Bloodstock Agent Volunteers to Write the Goat Show a Sale Catalog, Learns on Page Two What a Wether Is
GAINESVILLE, Texas — A Gainesville bloodstock agent who has spent 34 years writing sale catalogs for Thoroughbred yearlings has volunteered to produce the first official catalog for the market goat division of the Cooke County Junior Livestock Show, and has so far submitted three drafts, two formal corrections, and a written apology to a goat.
The agent, who asked to remain unnamed because “the horse people read Farm.FM,” said the idea came to him at a feed store on US 82 in November, when he overheard two FFA members discussing a wether’s loin. “I heard ‘look at the hip on him,’” he said. “I thought, these are my people. These people need a catalog.”
They did not need a catalog. They were buying feed.
Cooke County Has the Horses. The Junior Show Has the Goats.
According to the USDA’s 2022 Census of Agriculture profile for Cooke County, the county had 5,018 horses and ranked third in the entire state for equine sales. It also had 3,370 goats and 64,346 acres of hay and forage, which the agent describes as “Thoroughbred infrastructure” and which the goats describe as lunch.
“We are horse country up here on the Red River,” the agent said. “And every January the junior show walks right past the horses and hands the banners to steers, lambs and goats. I took that personally for 30 years. Then I decided to help.”
Helping, in the Thoroughbred business, means a catalog: a thick book in which every animal is given a hip number and a page listing its sire, its dam, its second dam, and every race any of them ever won in bold type, so buyers can spend serious money on relatives who are not for sale.
Hip No. 1 and the Problem on Page Two
The first draft, in a binder with a laminated cover, opened as follows:
Hip No. 1. Bourbon Pecan. Boer-cross market wether, middleweight. Sire: a buck from a pasture near Era, known locally as “the good one.” Dam: “the brown doe.” Second dam: not recorded; was eating a fence at the time. Race record: unraced. Notes: has finished first to the feed pan on 61 consecutive mornings, a streak unmatched in his pen, which contains only him.
Page two was titled RESIDUAL VALUE AS A FUTURE SIRE. It projected Bourbon Pecan’s stud fees through 2034.
An ag teacher read page two, set the binder down gently, and explained what a wether is.
The agent sat on a feed bucket. “So there’s no stud career.” “None.” “So the whole value is the race record.” “There’s no race.” “So the whole value,” he said slowly, “is the goat.”
“That,” the ag teacher said, “is the entire goat show.”
The first formal correction struck page two and added a line to Hip No. 1: “Breeding prospects: none, by design, and he seems at peace with it.” The agent then wrote the apology letter, addressed to Bourbon Pecan, which the goat ate.
The Search for the Nick
The second draft turned to breeding does, where pedigree at least has somewhere to go. The agent fixated on the 2026 results the Muenster ISD posted from last year’s lamb and goat competition, in which one pair of siblings took Grand and Reserve Grand Champion Market Goat, all three weight classes, and Grand and Reserve Grand Champion Breeding Doe. In horse terms, the agent said, that is not a good year. That is a dynasty.
In bloodstock, a cross that keeps producing winners is called a nick. The agent spent December hunting for it. He asked whether the winning goats shared a sire, a pasture, a water trough, or a zodiac sign.
The exhibitors politely explained that they fed twice a day, walked their goats every evening, and practiced bracing until the goats stood like furniture. That was the nick.
His second draft now reads: “Nick: the cross of a good goat with two kids who get up at 5 a.m.” He insists it is a pun. The ag teacher says it is just accurate.
The Cooke County Fair’s Foundation Sire Was a Mule
For the history page, the agent researched the Cooke County Fair itself, which dates to 1871 and whose 150th anniversary was honored by a Texas Senate resolution. One of its first attractions was a “flying jenny,” a merry-go-round powered by a mule walking in a circle.
The agent was thrilled, and listed the mule as the fair’s “foundation sire.” A retired cattleman who volunteers in the goat barn informed him, kindly, that mules cannot sire anything either.
That was the second correction, and it produced the agent’s only real insight of the season: the fair’s two most important animals, the 1871 mule and the modern market wether, share one career limitation, and the fair has run more than 150 years without either needing a pedigree.
Conditions of Sale, as Revised by the Show Office
The show office returned the third draft’s Conditions of Sale page with margin notes, a copy of which Farm.FM has obtained.
- Agent: “Radiographs of each goat’s knees shall be available to buyers.” Show office: “The vet is busy. With actual animals.”
- Agent: “Each goat shall breeze one furlong on the clock.” Show office: “Tried it. Every goat breezed toward the hay.” In a county with 64,346 acres of hay, the agent conceded, that is not a direction. It is every direction.
- Agent: “Track condition shall be posted daily.” Show office: “It’s the first week of January in Cooke County. Track condition is ice.”
What the 4-H and FFA Exhibitors Already Knew
At the show, the agent watched the judge sort the middleweight class without once asking about anybody’s second dam. The judge handled each goat, watched them walk, and talked about muscle, balance and structure. Bourbon Pecan placed fourth, which the agent recorded as “stakes-placed.”
Afterward, a 12-year-old exhibitor from Lindsay handed him a sheet of notebook paper. Her school bus passes his paddock, she explained, so she had evaluated his yearlings the way she would a goat.
It read: “Hip No. 1: Long-legged. Narrow through the chest. Would place no higher than fourth in a middleweight class. Hip No. 2: Moves out freely. Needs more time at the feed pan. Hip No. 3: Excellent. Do not sell this one.”
His veterinarian agreed on every point. Hip No. 3 has been pulled from a spring sale.
The show office has accepted his offer to produce next year’s goat catalog, on the condition that the exhibitor from Lindsay writes it. He has been assigned to carry water buckets, a job he says is the first in 34 years where nobody asked about his ancestors.
Five Humorous Observations About Texas 4-H Livestock Shows
- He projected stud fees for a wether. That’s like writing a retirement plan for a ham. Bourbon Pecan ate the apology letter, which is the most accurate review the catalog got.
- Cooke County is third in Texas for horse sales and the junior show judges goats. A goat will ride in anything. A horse wants a trailer with air conditioning.
- The fair’s first star was a mule walking in a circle in 1871. Go to any goat show in January and you’ll see that job still exists. It’s just held by a 14-year-old with a show stick.
- Sixty-four thousand acres of hay. You could turn a goat loose anywhere in Cooke County, point him in any direction, and he would technically be on course.
- Thirty-four years in bloodstock, and the best appraisal of his yearlings came off a school bus. Somewhere in Kentucky a man with a five-figure consulting fee just felt a draft.