Hail the Hereford! Fort Worth junior steer champion nabs a record $300,000 at auction
On the weekend before Valentine’s Day, a steer named Cupid Shuffle stole the show.
The polled Hereford, who on Friday was crowned junior steer champion at the Fort Worth Stock Show & Rodeo, sold Saturday morning for a record-smashing $300,000 at auction on the show’s final day.
All of that money goes to Cupid Shuffle’s handler, Ryder Day, 12, whose family raises show cattle in Meadow, a town of about 600 residents near Lubbock.
Day, speaking at a news conference while wearing a black cowboy hat and bandana, said he plans to use that bounty to pay for college, and buy more cattle for himself and his brother, Riggin, 9.
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.
Cupid Shuffle was the first Hereford to win the top prize in Fort Worth since 1982. Although Herefords are originally from England, they have been bred on ranches in the United States since the 1800s and are part of Western lore.
In recent years, the stock show’s junior steer competition has been dominated by the fluffier European crossbreds.
“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. On that day, the family decided which animal they would bring to the 2020 show in Fort Worth, and they gave him a name suitable for the holiday: Cupid. (The name was later modified to Cupid Shuffle.)
“I’ll tell you what: This is Hereford folks taking care of their own,” Katie Jo Day 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.
The Sale of Champions auction capped off the 22-day run for the Fort Worth Stock Show & Rodeo.
Cupid Shuffle was the first of about 300 animals 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, another Hereford shown by Holly Thomas, 17, of Gatesville. That Hereford, simply named Dave, brought in a whopping $200,000.
Also, Hillwood submitted the $195,000 winning bid for last year’s junior steer grand champion.
This story was originally published February 8, 2020 at 12:37 PM.
