Livestock health a key element of fair

IMPERIAL — Just past the midpoint of the California Mid-Winter Fair & Fiesta, local youths and their animals have made the journey from showcasing all that hard work, to preparing for this weekend’s livestock auction.

There are many aspects to prepping livestock for competition and auction, and much of that effort starts well before the fair begins.

But once it does, ensuring that the livestock is healthy and free of disease that could impact other animals or the public itself is an important part of Kelly Secord’s job.

Secord, of Oak Hills, is the fair-contracted livestock coordinator. Her seventh Imperial County fair, Secord arrives in the Valley about a week before the fair starts and leaves about a week after it closes.

In addition to an action-packed agenda of tasks to accomplish in that time, animal health is key, and that means inspections, outreach and having local veterinarians on call.

“The advisers, leaders, parents and exhibitors do what they can at their original facilities,” Secord said. “And if they have any health issues they need assistance with, they will go to breeders or veterinarians.”

The fair does not have veterinarians on site doing any sort of spot checks or regular rounds, but Dr. Abigail Arreola and Dr. Oliver Kenagy of El Centro Animal Clinic are on call when the fair and the youths’ animals need them.

Secord said the worst thing the vets or the fair’s livestock officials usually deal with is a tummy ache from someone in the public feeding an animal something not normally part of its diet.

Any major health concerns are weeded out before the animals get on site in a process called “sifting,” the 40-year fair industry pro said.

As 4-H, FFA and Grange, as well as independent students and their advisers, begin to move the animals into the fairgrounds on the Thursday before and the Friday morning of the start of the fair, livestock industry professionals “sift” and screen the animals.

The animals “go through a classifying process,” Secord said, where they are checked for disease, opened wounds, fungi, among other things, “because we don’t want those things on site.”

Secord said some years all the animals make the cut, and others years there can be three or four animals not allowed into the barns. This year, she said, three animals were asked to leave the premises.

A lot of these health concerns are taken care of during the project process, when youths big up their animals from breeders and project leaders and advisers take the youths through the process.

“I think we need to give a huge amount of credit to the livestock leaders, and the 4-H and FFA leaders are extremely knowledgeable in their field,” said Linsey Dale, a member of the fair board since 2012 and executive director of the Imperial County Farm Bureau.

Dale said the livestock leaders are on hand during the duration of the fair and the youths get the opportunity to learn how to care for animals, provide proper animal nutrition and bedding and stabling requirements.

Secord likens the team approach to animal health as that “It Takes a Village” credo.

“It’s kind of like taking care of children in the village,” she said. “We all walk through and check out the animals. Between the leaders, advisers, parents and kids, everybody watches.”

Photo by Elizabeth Varin

This story originally ran in the Imperial Valley Press, March 5, 2015.