By Bob Strohm
bstrohm@wbcowqel.com

Judging for some of the championship animals from the Crawford County Fair wasn’t finished after the conclusion of the fair, as a carcass show was held at Link’s Country Meats Wednesday.

Members of the Crawford Farm Bureau, bidding winners of the Sale of Champions, and animal exhibitors of the Crawford County Fair attended the event, which was an educational course on how meat is graded before being sent to the store shelves.

Farm Bureau member Kurt Weaver explained that this is the other side to the live shows at the fair.

“They are going to go through and look at the carcasses, there are going to be judges from OSU who judged the animals, answer any questions, and they did the judging and actually placed the carcasses,” Weaver said. “So it is a little bit different than the live show at the fair. This is the other part of it.”

Judges Trey Garza and Ethan Scheffler from The Ohio State University inspected beef, lamb, goat, and pork carcasses of the champion animals. Prior to the tour of the carcasses hanging on the racks, Garza and Scheffler explained what goes into the inspection of the meat cuts and how they are graded.

“In the beef carcass, quality is the biggest factor,” Garza said. “It needs to be juicy with lots of marbling, high choice with quality flavor. To measure that we cut between the 12th and 14th rib. After the quality is determined, we look at the ribeye size which is measured in square inches. We combine the two factors to determine the boneless retail cuts.”

Garza noted that of the beef carcasses, none attained the level of prime cut, but all were in the choice to choice-range.

“In pork, the quality is determined by the pale, soft exudative; the less you have the better,” Scheffler said. “There were none in the contests today. Then we judge based on the lean muscle trim of the back fat, which went from .2 to .9 inches, and the loin muscle, which went from 11.5 to 7.9 inches.”

Scheffler added that the meat quality was fabulous, which ties back to the way the kids showed, and handled their hogs, and how the animals were loaded before being sent to slaughter.

“The lambs had good carcass weights. We measure the back fat – thin fat on lambs is good,” Scheffler said. “There was some decent ribeye, everything was over 2.5 inches.  There were no bad lambs, all pretty decent at 50 plus. We like goats in the 40s and 50s. Ribeyes a lot of 2s. The adjustments are made then based on leg and body score.”

After explaining how the carcass is judged for quality of meat, the attendees toured Link’s Country Meats to view the animals on the rack. Exhibitors who had attended the event were then photographed with their animal.

Kendal Widman, who had a pork and a beef carcass, noted how it felt seeing the animals on the rack.

“It is kind of cool because all that hard work paid off to get them to look right, but it is also weird at the same time because this is just different from showing it,” Widman said. “It was cool seeing my hog and steer, as well as everyone else’s and the differences between them.”

Widman finished with the second best pig on the rack, and the fourth best beef carcass.

Jack Reed, who had a lamb in the carcass contest, explained what it was like after the tour.

“I did a lot of the other processes – I took care of them, I have shown them,” Reed said. “I have never seen this part of the process. I thought it would be cool to see what all your hard work does, what kind of feed you put in, what it turns out to. It was a really neat experience to watch it and see what your end project comes out to.”

Reed finished third in the lamb carcass judging.

Carcass Show Results

Lamb

1. Ethan Martin
2. Cole Heinlen
3. Jack Reed
4. Braden Siefert

Goats

1. Emily Rudd
2. Douglas Reer
3. Levi Hartschuh
4. Alec Sipes

Beef

1. Sellman
2. Adam Widman
3. Christian Stirm
4. Kendal Widman
5. Lori Millenbaugh
6. Davis

Pork

1. Kylee Bloomfield
2. Kendal Widman
3. Brenden Grady
4. Kevin Keick
5. Shaylin Miller
6. Brandon Vent
7. Alexus Burkart
8. Seth Pope
9. Machenzie Flick
10 Caitlin Koschnick
11. Atlie Lohr