Last week’s Saratoga County Fair was the perfect place for any animal lover. Every animal from traditional horses, chickens, cows and pigs, to llamas, goats, sheep, oxen and even baby reindeer are available to be seen and petted.
A few may even fall in love with a type of animal that is very non-traditional.
Working at the Saratoga County Fair when he was young, Kenny Plummer was put in charge of driving around a yoke of oxen for the week. He fell in love with them and decided to buy a couple to keep as pets.
Plummer and Pat Guilmette now raise four Brown Swiss oxen at their home on Hop City Road in Ballston Spa.
Clem and Clyde are 7 years old and weigh about 2,500 pounds each. Briggs and Stratton are 5 and weigh about 2,100 pounds.
The large size of oxen can be misleading. Plummer said these large animals are very gentle. They like to be rubbed and stroked and barely flinch when a person climbs on their backs.
Oxen are mainly used as work animals, pulling plows or hauling carts. These oxen are not used for work, but as pets and exhibits in area fairs such as the Saratoga County Fair, the Washington County Fair and the fair in Schodack. Plummer said they also use the oxen to pull sleighs for rides during the winter.
Guilmette said the oxen are not high maintenance animals, and don’t need a lot of space to live. They each eat a bale of hay and two quarts of grain per day, and have about 1 acre of land to live on. The oxen pay for themselves through appearances at fairs and sleigh rides.
Plummer and Guilmette rescued the animals from cattle farms where they would have become veal or beef.
Oxen are basically grown bull calves. A pair of calves is selected because of their disposition, size, color and alertness. The calves are raised together, and when they are 6 months old, they are castrated and called steer. As the steer age to be about 5, with a full set of teeth and training, the pair becomes a yoke of oxen.
The animals don’t live very long.
I’d say 15 years is a good long life, Guilmette said.
The oxen like exercise, so while at the fair Plummer and Guilmette periodically walk them around the fairgrounds.
Not just at Christmas
Bob Smith is another animal lover who now breeds an unusual animal at least for this part of the world. Smith is the owner of 15 reindeer.
Smith is a retired school-teacher who also has a farm on Hop City Road.
Reindeer mostly live north of the Artic Circle, although Smith got his original pair from the farther south locale of Mayfield.
Like Plummer and Guilmette, Smith keeps his reindeer as pets and shows them at fairs. His busiest time of year with the reindeer is, of course, during the winter holidays when he is attending an event almost every night.
For the past five weeks, Smith has been busy taking care of two reindeer babies who were re-jected by their mothers. Omega is black and white and 2 months old, and Shadow, who is all black, was born on May 12. The two babies had to be bottle-fed and live inside Smith’s home.
`They don’t think they are reindeer, they want nothing to do with the rest of the animals,` Smith said.
Smith also keeps two horses and a bunch of chickens, which mostly belong to his wife, Wendy.
Smith said reindeer are pretty easy to care for. They eat hay and grain, are pretty healthy animals, but fragile when they are young.
They are shy animals, but during breeding season the males can become dangerous.
`We arrange the barn so we don’t have to have any contact with the males during that time,` Smith said.
Because reindeer are accustomed to the cold weather, Smith doesn’t have to heat the barn where they live, but during the summer, the reindeer need plenty of shade.
`Reindeer grow a tremendous coat in the winter that keep them warm and then shed it in the summer,` Smith said.
Sheep showing
Sheep are animals that are used to growing coats. Marissa Taylor,16, and her family who own Spring Brook Farm in Halfmoon own about nine Corriedale sheep. They mostly use the animals for showing and for their wool.
Taylor said her mother Mary bought the sheep because she is an avid knitter and wanted to learn how to spin her own wool. Now Mary Taylor owns sheep, spins and knits.
Marissa Taylor and her sister take the sheep to fairs and show them, kind of like dogs.
Taylor said it takes about a month to get a sheep ready for a show; the two she was caring for were only a few months old.
`We spend a lot of time with the sheep to get them ready for shows. They need to learn how to be around people,` Taylor said.
During the show, the animals are led around a ring and judged. Judges have scorecards that rank which sheep is best.
`The judges check the sheep’s wool for an oil called lanolin, which protects the sheep. A good wool coat will have a nice even crimp,` Taylor said.
The winners of county fair competitions move on to regional competitions and then states.
Not exactly NASCAR
Animals at the fair also star in their own shows. Pigs are the stars of Rosaire’s Royal Racing Pigs.
This hilarious performance, sponsored by Quandt’s Quality Food Products, features live pigs racing around a small track.
Wayne Rosaire owns the pigs and the company. He and his family usually spend 10 months a year traveling across the county with his pig-racing show, per-forming at county and state fairs, private parties and functions. Rosaire’s 15-year-old daughter Pamela was with him at the fair.
Rosaire picks children scream-ing enthusiastically out of the audience to be a `pig rooter,` and if the pig the child has chose wins, the lucky rooter wins a prize.
Each pig has its own name, such as Paris Swilton, and Snoop Hoggie Hog.
`A lot of the names come from the audience,` Rosaire said.
All four racing heats feature a different sort of pig that race around the track one time. The show’s headliners are the 280-pound Asian potbelly pigs, including `Tyrone the Terrible.` They waddle around the track in search of food until one of them happens across the finish line.
Usually five pigs race at a time, but unfortunately one of the potbelly pigs was injured. Rosaire said he pulled a hamstring, but not to worry, nothing a little `oinkment` couldn’t fix. “
