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Ryder Day with his Grand Champion Steer Cupid Shuffle.
FORT WORTH - Twelve-year-old Ryder Day, of Meadow FFA, fought back tears of joy last Friday when he pulled off an improbable victory at the Fort Worth Stock Show and Rodeo.
Day won the junior steer grand champion prize with his Hereford, Cupid Shuffle.
“I think I’m dreaming,” said Day after being selected grand champion.
Many in the stock show community called the feat historical, as it was the first time since 1982 that a Hereford breed had won the prestigious top prize in the competition. For many years the event has been dominated by European crossbreds, but 2020 broke the mold with Cupid Shuffle’s momentous win and a second Hereford, Dave, being selected as the reserve grand champion. Holly Thomas, 17 of Gatesville 4H, took the second prize with Dave.
The junior steer competition, in which more than 1,500 animals compete in more than 40 categories, is widely considered the most prestigious event at the Stock Show, which lasted 22 days.
This year’s junior steer competition was held at the Will Rogers Coliseum, with more than 2,000 people looking on. In previous years, the competition was held at the much smaller Watt Arena, which typically held only 1,000 or so fans.
Saturday’s auction was billed as the Sale of Champions and featured an old-fashioned, in-the-round sale of more than 300 prized animals.
After a historic win in front of a record crowd, it was only fitting that Day and Cupid Shuffle break the auction record with a staggering bid of $300,000.
All of that money goes to Day, whose family raised Cupid Shuffle on their ranch in Meadow, a town of about 600 residents near Lubbock.
Day, speaking to reporters, said he plans to use the prize money to pay for college for himself and his younger brother Riggin, 9.
When asked what he will do with the rest of the bounty, Day responded “My brother and I are going to buy a ranch and raise cattle like my parents, grandparents, and great grandparents.”
The $300,000 sale, which easily surpassed the previous Fort Worth junior steer auction record of $240,000 in 2017, brought hundreds of bidders and spectators to their feet inside West Arena. They raucously applauded and cheered Day and his family for returning prestige to the Hereford breed.
“We wanted to set a record because it’s been a long time since a Hereford won,” said Gary Buchholz, who along with his wife Kathy Knox Buchholz owns GKB Cattle and submitted the winning bid.
The Buchholzes are based in Waxahachie, but own cattle across the state.
“We made up our minds last night, we were going to get a steer,” Gary Buchholz said, adding that the couple tentatively planned to donate Cupid Shuffle to the Fort Worth Zoo.
Cupid Shuffle got his name on Valentine’s Day last year, the family said. “We brought him up from the pasture on Valentine’s Day and whenever we were working with him he was like moving around,” said Day. “He shuffled around so we called him Cupid Shuffle.”
“I’ll tell you what: This is Hereford folks taking care of their own,” Katie Jo Day, mother to Ryder and Riggin, said after the auction, explaining that she had decades of history with the auction-winning Buchholzes. In 1989 in Fort Worth, she showed a Hereford steer provided by Kathy Knox Buchholz’s father, the legendary Hereford breeder George W. “Tee” Knox of Martin County.
Cupid Shuffle was the first animal auctioned Saturday. The in-the-round auction at West Arena featured an exciting back-and-forth bidding war between the Buchholzes’ GKB Cattle and Hillwood, a well-known real estate development company in north Fort Worth.
Although GKB Cattle won the bid for Cupid Shuffle, Hillwood was the winning bidder for the reserve grand champion Dave with a whopping $200,000.
Day is the son of Rusty and Katie Jo Day of Meadow and the grandson of Jody and De Ann Yates of Tarzan. He is the great grandson of Nancy Yates of Tarzan and the late Sammy Yates.