Timothy and Siena go to the fair

Timothy lay nestled in the sawdust, resting his cheek atop a white fence rail as he slept to the sound of country radio. One ear idly twitched in his sleep.

Siena Shaddon, the Pleasant Hill high schooler who raised Timothy ahead of the Youth Livestock Auction at the Lane County Fair, watched the auctions before Timothy’s in the adjoining expo hall space. 

In a few hours, the 16-year-old girl would lead the 1,300-plus-pound Hereford steer out of the stall and into a pen, before the eyes of buyers bidding on the right to process him for meat. 

Timothy and Shaddon are two of countless youth-livestock pairs at fairs across the country. The fairs are a rite of passage — and a subject of criticism from some animal lovers and vegans who object to what they see as cruelty.

For the youth, the experience offers an education like no other. For the animal, it means a brief but, judging from tears after the auction, loved life, one the vast majority of cattle raised for meat never experience. 

“It is sad,” Shaddon said. “At the same time, he’s lived the best life he could have lived.” 

Raising Timothy

Shaddon picked Timothy not because he looked like he would be a top-market steer, but because he looked cute, with a sweet face and long white eyelashes.

This was Shaddon’s fourth year exhibiting a steer at the fair. As a child, she loved horses — but horses, her parents said, wouldn’t benefit the whole family. 

They instead went with beef, purchasing a handful of cows for their acreage to breed and raise for meat starting when Shaddon was 9 years old. Many of Shaddon’s friends at school were involved in either 4-H or Future Farmers of America. She joined in the seventh grade.

Timothy is Shaddon’s first Hereford, a type of cattle selectively bred in the eighteenth century in England by farmers looking to create an efficient cattle breed with a high yield of beef, to meet the demands of the expanding food market at the outset of the Industrial Revolution. 

Compared to most cattle produced for meat, Timothy has led a charmed life in Pleasant Hill. Shaddon got to know Timothy’s preferences as she cared for him, picking up his idiosyncrasies around blow-drying his hair and feeding him protein pellet treats. 

Timothy likes neck scratches. He likes being washed on his body, but not his head. He likes the apple trees by the barn a little too much, chewing up its branches if he’s not watched. He likes to play with the Shaddon’s dog and barn cat, but he doesn’t realize that they don’t want to play with him.

Unlike other animals at the Youth Livestock Auction, steers (males who are castrated young) require more active investment. It’s expensive to build their living spaces and takes time to raise the steer, longer than a pig. Shaddon received Timothy last October, when he was around 6 months old.

Some families are like 4-H royalty, with the resources and professional cattle know-how to make their children’s entries likely to win in each year. That is not true of the Shaddons, though Siena did win the top prize for cattle showmanship her first year at 4-H.

Shaddon’s mom, Nicola, is an elementary school teacher. Her dad, Jason, is a pipefitter. Neither of them did 4-H or Future Farmers of America growing up. There was a learning curve for the whole family when Shaddon started exhibiting steer. (Her younger brother, Parker, joined the following year.)

The Shaddons have added to the space for the 4-H steer each year, but it’s by no means a full-scale cattle operation; Timothy benefitted from push broom bristles secured to the floor for an at-will scratching post at home.

The country radio station is another perk for Timothy at the Shaddon’s barn, often playing in the background as Shaddon tended to him. The radio at the fair was to replicate that amid his new surroundings.

“So it feels like home,” Nicola Shaddon said. 

At the fair

Cotton candy carriers and cowboy hat wearers idly walked through the livestock barn during the fair, many ignoring signs not to touch the animals and giving a steer a pat in passing.

The teens and younger children of the East Lane 4-H Club scooped poop, combed hair and fluffed tails to perfection before the competitions in the days before the auction. 

For showmanship, a contest of how well the youth presents the animal, Shaddon placed fourth in her class, with Timothy’s heavy head weighing down how well she could keep it aloft.

In the market competition, a measure of how well a steer represents his breed, Timothy placed fifth in his class of eight. The judge said he was perfect in profile, but lacked the volume she wanted to see.

Though he didn’t take home any top honors, Timothy still got congratulatory protein pellet treats afterward. “I’m proud of Timothy,” Shaddon said. “I feel like he did a lot better than I expected he was going to do.”

In between taking care of Timothy, Shaddon was like any other teenage girl: hanging out with the other members of the East Lane 4-H Club, playing a dice game atop a turned-over bucket, hopping on the rides at the fair.

Though she’s raised steer each year, taken home blue ribbons and a top award and is looking to exhibit with the Future Farmers of America next year, Shaddon is not planning on being a farmer.

Instead, she’s thinking of becoming a labor and delivery nurse, inspired by seeing calves born from their personal cattle, not from the 4-H experience. “The process by which it all happens, like the build up, is so cool,” she said. 

In an interview with Shaddon and her mom, Nicola disagreed, saying that goal does have connections to the 4-H experience. She’s seen her daughter working with Timothy, taking special care and tending to his needs, medical or otherwise, as they arose. 

“I think it’s helped build your confidence in thinking, ‘I could do this for people, I could do this for my future,’” Nicola Shaddon said to Siena. “We don’t have anyone in our family that’s in the medical field, so I don’t think she would have ever had that inspiration otherwise.”

Final price: $3.50/lb 

The actual auction for Timothy went quickly on Saturday afternoon. Shaddon said it felt like a blur, like when she’s focused during one of her volleyball or basketball games. (The announcer, funny enough, was her basketball coach.) 

The sound of bidders buzzing and the auctioneer’s rapid-fire announcing fell away. She paid attention only to Timothy, and how he was feeling under all of those lights and eyes.

His final auction price was $3.50 a pound, for a total valuation at his market weight standing around $4,620. Shaddon will use that money to purchase the calf for next year’s project and tuck away some for college.

It was not a fantastic final price for Timothy. Shaddon said she was disappointed. Paired with the reality that the steer wasn’t hers anymore, for a moment it was too much. She cried as she led Timothy away from the auction pen.

Timothy was purchased by a rural property real estate company based out of Junction City. That company can choose to take home Timothy’s meat to distribute it to friends, or sell it to a commercial buyer with the option to buy back some of the meat that way. 

But many local companies bid on livestock at the fair not to source meat, but to be a good member of the community and put money into the college funds of local students. The meat, which people say is higher quality than an average piece of protein, is an added bonus.

But that comes later. First, Timothy will destress from the hubbub of the county fair on an undisclosed farm for around a month before he meets his fate.

Saying goodbye to Timothy 

Although exhibitors no longer own the animals after auction, they care for them in the hours before livestock is transported and as the barn’s final visitors come through.

In those final hours, Shaddon braided a section of Timothy’s tail hair and cut it off. A company will turn it into a key chain. For a more 2025 keepsake, she snapped photos of Timothy. One will be her iPhone lockscreen.

Finally, after 10 p.m., it was time to say goodbye. Shaddon, at her mom’s prompting, approached Timothy. She scratched his head and ears. She gave him a forehead kiss. He made direct eye contact. 

“Don’t look at me like that,” she told him, misty-eyed. 

Then, with her family, Shaddon walked out of the expo hall and into the night.