Crockett County Junior Livestock Show: Camel Demands a Fiber Class
Fort Lancaster Camel Calls Press Conference in Ozona, Argues Mohair Country Owes Him a Fiber Class
OZONA, Texas — A dromedary camel who works with the Texas Camel Corps reenactors at Western Frontier Days near Sheffield called a press conference this week outside the Crockett County Fair Park Convention Center to announce that he will compete in the Crockett County Junior Livestock Show, and will not leave the lot until somebody hands him an entry form.
The camel, who goes by Major Tumbleweed and stands a little over seven feet at the hump, read a prepared statement from a sheet of paper his handler held up in front of him. He ate the bottom third before he finished. Farm.FM obtained the transcript, lightly edited for spitting.
Opening Statement: “Crockett County Is Fiber Country, and I Am Fiber”
MAJOR TUMBLEWEED: Good morning, and thank you for coming out to the Biggest Little Town in the World. I have studied this county. According to the federal government’s 2022 Census of Agriculture profile for Crockett County, you sell more sheep, goats, wool, mohair and milk than any county in Texas, and you rank fourth in the entire United States.
I am also told this show welcomes fine wool lambs, Dorper lambs, meat goats, Angora goats, rabbits and chickens, and holds a horse show besides. That is seven kinds of animal. I am asking for an eighth. I grow fiber. In certain Dallas stores it is sold one scarf at a time in a lit glass case. Yet I have been parked behind the convention center next to the propane tank.
I will now take questions. Please do not stand directly behind me.
Questions From the Press
FARM.FM: Major, are you a member of Crockett County 4-H?
MAJOR TUMBLEWEED: Not yet. Membership is for young people. I am fourteen. In camel years I am also fourteen.
A RANCH RADIO REPORTER: This has been a county show for nearly 80 years without a camel class. Why now?
MAJOR TUMBLEWEED: Because nobody asked. In the 1956 drought, this county took on 17,000 turkeys to diversify. Seventeen thousand. I am one camel. No turkey has ever carried anything across the Trans-Pecos. A turkey will not even carry a tune.
A WOOL BUYER: The county has 51,197 sheep and lambs and 45,432 goats. Aren’t you outnumbered?
MAJOR TUMBLEWEED: Ninety-six thousand to one. I prefer to think of it as a large welcoming committee that has not yet learned to wave.
A HAY HAULER: What about feed? The whole county grows 2,412 acres of hay.
MAJOR TUMBLEWEED: My strongest argument. I will eat things off a caliche hillside that a fine wool lamb would file a grievance about. A Dorper lamb will eat your rulebook. I will eat the binder. In a county where hay is the entire crop report, I am the most fiscally responsible exhibitor you will ever meet.
The Mohair Rebuttal From the Angora Barn
The press conference was then interrupted by a pen of Angora goats, or rather their exhibitor, an 11-year-old Crockett County 4-H member who walked over from the barn with a comb still in her back pocket and asked if she could have the floor.
She explained, politely and in order, that Angoras are not shown for being fuzzy. Mohair is a crop. It grows on the goat, gets shorn, gets weighed and gets sold, and a good Angora is judged on the animal underneath as well as the locks. She could tell him to the ounce what her goat’s last clip weighed.
“How often are you shorn?” she asked.
“I shed,” the camel said. “In the spring. In clumps. Mostly on my handler’s truck seat.”
“So nobody has ever weighed your clip.”
The camel requested a short recess.
During the recess, ranchers leaning on a flatbed agreed that a county averaging 6,432 acres per operation had plenty of room for one camel. None had room in his trailer. One had driven a one-ton dually and gooseneck to deliver a single show rabbit and was not unhitching for anybody.
Statement From the Crockett County Junior Livestock Show Office
At noon, the show office taped a written reply to the door at 1301 Avenue AA. It thanked Major Tumbleweed for his interest, noted that the show is a youth show for Crockett County 4-H members, and reminded the public that animals are entered by their exhibitors and do not enter themselves. The Crockett County AgriLife Extension office next door offered to explain project rules to any species, but asked the camel to stop leaning on its window.
The office suggested the Wool & Mohair Style Show, held the first Saturday of December. He had missed it while being historically accurate at Fort Lancaster. A volunteer mentioned Deerfest, the hunters’ banquet. The camel read the words “chicken-fried” and declined, since the menu made no firm promises about anyone.
Ruling in the Ring: Showmanship, Topline and Other Bad News
The 4-H members settled it the way they settle most things, by being more organized than the adults. During a break between classes, they offered the camel an exhibition walk.
The Angora exhibitor led him in. She asked him to walk on a loose lead; he went sideways. She asked him to set his feet; he knelt down, folded all four legs underneath himself, and refused to rise for six minutes. Asked to hold still, he looked down at the judge from about nine feet, which the judge called “the first time I’ve been evaluated back.”
The judge, giving an informal appraisal, praised the camel’s feet and patience with heat, then noted a “structural concern with the topline, roughly in the middle,” and said that if he was being honest there were two of them.
Afterward, the exhibitors gathered every clump of shed camel hair from the handler’s truck and weighed it on the rabbit scale: 11 ounces. Her Angora’s last clip outweighed it several times over, and she showed him the record book, figures in pencil, dates in ink.
Major Tumbleweed delivered his closing statement shortly after 3 p.m. “I came to Ozona to compete with the goats,” he said. “I leave having been out-produced by one. I served in the Army. I know when I am outranked. I am withdrawing my request and would like to know how a person becomes a buyer.”
The show office replied that buyers generally bring a checkbook. The handler told Farm.FM the camel has been eating the checkbook since 2019. The Major now waits at the barn gate most mornings, out in the West, where the air is pure, hoping the 11-year-old will sell him eleven ounces of mohair. She has quoted him a price. He is chewing on it.
The most recent show drew 36 Crockett County 4-H members, none of them camels.
Five Humorous Observations About Texas 4-H Livestock Shows
- Crockett County is number one in Texas for wool and mohair, and a camel showed up thinking fiber was a personality. That’s walking into a Fort Worth steakhouse to announce you have a cow.
- The man drove a one-ton dually and a gooseneck to deliver a four-pound rabbit. Out here that’s not overkill. That’s the smallest truck he owns.
- The county took in 17,000 turkeys in 1956 and nobody held a press conference. One camel asks for a class and it’s front-page news. Turkeys have the best publicist in Texas history.
- The judge said the topline had a concern “roughly in the middle,” then admitted there were two. Every judge in Texas has wanted to say that about something.
- An 11-year-old out-weighed a seven-foot animal’s entire fiber career with one goat and a pencil. The adults bring trucks. The kids bring the record book. The record book wins.