How an animal presents is not only what it is. Feed, hair and fitting change what judges, buyers and the trait numbers on every page see. Everything on this page applies to cattle in your show string (open an animal and use Add to Show String).
Hair
Every animal can grow a certain amount of show hair — its Hair Growth trait, which is heritable. Hair builds shape and dimension: it adds to Muscling, Capacity and Balance, and leg hair reads as bone. Calves and yearlings grow hair faster than mature cows.
- Work hair (½ task, once per animal per day): rinse, blow and brush. Hair grows now and the coat gets trained. Work it several days running and it grows faster still; a worked coat holds its hair, an unworked one loses it.
- Clip & fit (1 task, once per animal per day): clipping shapes the hair and fitting finishes the job. Unclipped hair is shaggy and only shows part of its value; a fresh clip shows all of it. A clip job grows out over about two weeks.
- Slick shear (1 task): hair to the skin. The judge sees exactly what is under the hair until it grows back. Some steer shows require slick-shorn cattle.
Hair that shows = hair × clip × work, and nothing while slick.
Tasks
You get 10 free task units per day (Central time) across your whole string. After that, each unit costs coins. Work the whole string at once from the Show String page — it goes down the list and stops at your free allowance unless you tell it to keep going with coins.
Hired help
The hired hair program works the hair every night for a monthly fee and spends none of your tasks. A cooler makes hair grow faster and hold. Both are billed nightly per head per game month with the rest of your feed bill; a bounced bill switches them off.
Slick-shorn shows
A sub show marked slick shorn required lets you enter any time, but when the show runs any entry still carrying hair is scratched and the entry fee is kept. You get a reminder the days before the show while an entered animal still has hair.
Judges
Judges place the animal as it stands, hair and all — but each judge has a lean: some reward hair, some see straight through it. Listen to the reasons.