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Gill teen wins all-around showman at Weld County Fair

Bill Jackson
For the Fence Postd

Ross Lohr of Gill capped off a pretty good day and 4-H career Sunday at the Weld County Fair.

Lohr, 18, was named the All-Around Livestock Showman at this year’s fair, one of the more prestigious awards given each year. Rebecca Peter, 18, also of Gill, was the reserve grand champion. Both are members of the Countryside 4-H Club, and Rebecca is also vice president of the Platte Valley FFA Chapter in Kersey, where she will be a senior this fall.

Then Lohr was named one of the two big winners in the first Premier Exhibitor Contest at the fair, and, along with Jennifer Seltzer of Briggsdale, won a $1,000 scholarship to the University of Northern Colorado. The contest was for exhibitors in market and breeding beef, meat goat, sheep and swine shows. They were judged for herdmanship – their stall cleanliness, displays and so forth – showmanship in the respective breeds, class placing and a written test.



The fair board put the program together to reward the work of those exhibitors who are excellent showmen but may not have animals good enough to win championships.

Casey Sidwell of Gill developed the test, a complex scoring system, and did all the computer work needed to determine the champions.



The all-around contest requires showmen to show dairy cattle, horses, market pigs, dairy and pygmy goats, meat goats, market lambs and market beef animals for five-minute periods each.

Jaylinn Lohr of Gill and Terra Seyler of Kersey were the intermediate division winners.

Lohr and Seltzer were joined as winners in the contest by Mary Kate Stevens of La Salle, Lindsay Bowman of Gill and Rayna Hodgson of Greeley. If a scholarship cannot be used by one of the winners, it reverts to one of the runners-up.

Lohr, who qualified in beef for the all-around contest, is a Platte Valley graduate and plans to go to a junior college in Colby, Kan., on a livestock judging scholarship. He and Peter collected trophies, that, as Rebecca put it, are “taller than I am.”

Lohr admitted he didn’t know where it was going in the family home.

“I’ve never had one this big before,” he said. During the Sunday morning contest, he said the goats gave him problems “because I haven’t been around them that much.” He is the son of Mike and Nancy Lohr of Gill.

For Rebecca, it was the horses that were a problem. She was the qualifier from the market swine division and is the daughter of Brad and Vicki Peter.

“The horses just acted up a little. I’ve shown them at other round robin contests before, but that’s been about it,” she said.

Seltzer, 15, will be a sophomore at Prairie High School in New Raymer this year and is the daughter of Tim and Jennifer Seltzer.

“I don’t know where I’ll go to school after I graduate, so I guess I’ll just have to wait and see what happens,” she said.


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