Austin Dorman of Wright City is being lauded after taking a market steer all the way to a grand champion win at the Missouri State Fair Youth Livestock Show Aug. 19.

For young animal exhibitors in 4-H and FFA, it’s one of the biggest prizes most would dream of achieving. For Dorman, it took four years of attempts and hundreds of hours of work each year to make that dream come true.

“It took about a week to kick in, just to finally believe that I won,” commented Dorman, who graduated from Wright City High School this spring. “We knew the steer was really good ... but we had a couple hard steers in our class.”

Dorman and his family have taken cattle to state and national shows before, but this was his first major win. Every visit is a great learning opportunity, but he said the most memorable part of the competitions is how they bring families of the exhibitors together.

“The coolest thing about it is seeing families so close, how they can all get along together. Showing is stressful — you have all these days and hours working with the animals,” Dorman explained. “But it’s cool how all the families work together with the same common goal, and strive to do the best they possibly can.”

For Dorman, just getting started in the world of livestock shows took a lot of work. When he was in middle school, he began working summer jobs for his grandfather in exchange for calves to show at the Warren County Fair. Using money from those competitions, Dorman began purchasing his own show steers.

Ironically, Dorman said the steer he took to the state grand champion win didn’t even place reserve at this year’s county fair.

That contradiction highlighted one of the life lessons of the exhibitions, which is that an individual judge’s preferences can greatly affect an animal’s placement. But so, too, does the quality of the exhibitor.

“Each animal’s going to have a fault no matter what, no matter how much money you spend on it. If you know those faults, you can work them out ... and depending on how you set them up, you can make them look better, structure-wise,” Dorman commented.

There’s also significant time and expense involved in raising a high-quality show animal. It can total six hours every day to wash, feed and exercise an animal, from April until the end of the year’s shows. At the same time, Dorman is also running a business with his brother and continuing his education with Ranken Technical College.

“You’ve got to have a lot of good time management,” Dorman said. “Some days you don’t want to wake up the next morning because you’re so tired, but you gotta get up and get going.”

After he has shown animals for a few more years, Dorman said he wants to keep raising cattle that he can sell to a new generation of youth exhibitors, and help coach them on how to show.

Dorman’s father, Joey, said he’s extremely proud of the work his son put in to earn state grand champion.

“I’ve watched him eight or nine years chase his dream, and his dream came true. It was special to me,” Joey said. “I knew he could do it.”

With Austin’s work ethic and commitment, Joey said he’s confident his son will continue to accomplish what he sets out to do.

“I know he’s going to go somewhere in life,” Joey said.