Bedeker steered to top honors

When 13-year-old Emma Bedeker joined 4-H three or four years ago, it was to show horses. She rides, and most of the people who ride at her stable also show their horses, she said. But this February, Emma won top honors at the Illinois Beef Expo in Springfield — not for a horse she entered, but for a steer.

Emma’s Chianina steer “Teddy” won Grand Champion Steer on February 27, giving Emma bragging rights, the use of a trailer emblazoned with the words, “2011 Illinois Beef Expo Champion,” and cash prizes for each class she won.

“I was surprised,” she said of the win. “I was very excited and happy.”

Emma did pretty well last summer, too, taking Reserve Grand Champion Land of Lincoln Steer at the Illinois State Fair. There’s a lot to nurturing a champion, she said. Emma had guidance, though, from her father who showed pigs when he was a kid in 4-H and from family friend Eric Baudino, who has also taken honors with livestock in recent years.

Emma, a seventh grader at Seneca Grade School, lives on the family farm south of Seneca. She enjoys riding horses and being in the fresh country air.

“I like it,” she said of living in the country. “It’s nice and quiet, and there’s always something to do.”

She joined 4-H and started showing three or four years ago. The first year, she showed two animals — a horse and a cow.

The horse was a red roan named, “Romeo.” He had a reddish brown coat with speckles of white. It was a 6-year-old horse she leased and had loved to ride at the stables. He ended up getting Grand Champion with the points.

“It did very well,” she said.

To get him ready, she rode him two or three times a week to exercise him and get him used to her. She gave him baths once a week during the summer and brushed and fed him.

“He was very calm,” she said of Romeo.

Just before the shows, Emma said she gave him a bath, had him clipped, cut the mane and groomed him and banded the mane with rubber bands.

She also showed a heifer that year, which ended up winning the 4-H show. Cows take a little more to get them ready for show, she said, and right before, she put adhesive on the heifer’s hair to make it stick out and look bigger. That’s important with showing cattle, she said. Over the time she had her, she would go out and brush her and feed her and lead her, walking her around to get her used to it.

This year was her best year, she said, with her steer Teddy winning Grand Champion.

“You show it in your class, then to the division of the breeds, then to the champion drive with all the different breeds,” she said. “I think he won because he was so muscular and his hair was so long that he just stood out.”

Emma said taking care of cows in the winter means putting them in a heated shed and washing them every two weeks. In the summer, she gets up as early as 5:30 to wash them, and she puts them in a “cooler,” which is a refrigerated shed. Their hair grows better and thicker in the cold, she said.

“It’s like a big refrigerator,” she said. “They stay in there early morning to late night. The winter coat is the best.”

She said she brushed him a lot and gave him good feed.

Emma said it’s fun to raise the animals and show them. The best part is going to the shows.

“I like going to the shows because there’s a lot of people there,” she said.

The worst part, she said has to be all the work and time it takes.

Her father would say the work is good for her and for kids in general.

“I think it teaches them the value of hard work,” Dan Bedeker said. “They learn the value of hard work early on, and that if you don’t work hard for something, you might not get it. . . That applies to school, too, and carries on through the rest of your life.”

Emma’s mother said getting the animals ready for show does take a lot of work.

“It’s a daily chore, especially around the fairs,” Tracy Bedeker said. “It’s not unusual for them to get up at five in the morning. . . Emma’s extremely hard-working and has a little of the perfectionist in her, and that spills over into other areas of her life, too.”

Tracy said Emma also has good grades and is on a traveling basketball team.

Emma said she thinks she will show a steer again next year. When asked if she will do anything differently next year, she said, “I think I’ll stick to what I did this year.”