Big Bucks at the Big Show

Lots of money changing hands at the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo Auctions.

The Grand Champion Steer sold for $350,000 – nowhere near a record, but twice what was paid at last year’s show. 

The Grand Champion Lamb sold last week for a world record $200,000 and the Junior Show Grand Champion Goat brought $140k. 

Even this years Grand Champion Wine from the Rodeo Uncorked event sold for a new show record price of $210,000 for a single bottle.

 

 

A Katy high school student’s color pencil drawing of a man riding a horse raked in a record $205,000 at the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo’s School Art Auction last Sunday.
Seventeen-year-old Komal Agarwal, a junior at Seven Lakes High School, said “When I first started this drawing I was hoping and praying with every stroke of my pencil to just make it into the top 10,” she said. “I didn’t expect this to happen.”

Here’s the top entry in the Junior High division, it’s a watercolor painted by Michelle Huang of Ft. Bend ISD.

While this is about the Stock Show, I guess that I should mention that there have been some great rides and great scores over at the Rodeo.  For example, Barrel racer Sherry Cervi, who set a Houston record with a time of 14.59 seconds en route to winning the rodeo last year, already has broken that mark three times, setting the new low at 14.30 and winning all three go-rounds in the series to move on to the finals with $10,000 in her pocket.

Our next door neighbor, Wilson Graff, spent most of yesterday, well into yesterday evening, grooming his beautiful Red Angus heifer, Joleen.  He’ll be moving her up to the stock show early Wednesday morning.  She’ll compete in the Scramble Calf competition on Thursday and the Breeding Heifer show on Sunday.