Tracy Beiter walked with great caution through the swarm of cowboys and cowgirls, her eyes wide, each step measured, just the way you’d imagine a person would walk through a crowd while carrying a goat’s urine sample at the end of a long stick.
While attracting neither the publicity nor the fan appeal of its more popular stick relative, the corn dog, specimen-on-a-stick is a mainstay at livestock shows and county fair competitions. Beiter, a college student, is one of dozens of National Western Stock Show & Rodeo volunteers charged with retrieving the samples from livestock.
Then, laboratory workers test the urine for steroids and other meat-enhancing drugs to make sure the cattle, sheep, pigs and goats don’t share the same personal sports trainer with any major-league baseball players.
Drug testing crashed hard into the stock show 11 years ago. Badger, a steer owned by 16-year-old Ryan Rash of Crockett, Texas, won first prize in its division and sold at auction for the staggering sum of $37,500. Days later lab workers found clenbuterol – a muscle-growing drug – in Badger’s urine sample. National Western officials stripped Rash of the money and the ribbon and banned him from competition in Colorado for life.
And so Beiter, of Los Angeles, a veterinary student at Colorado State University, and many other volunteers swing into action at the end of each National Western livestock event.
They are armed with long sticks. At the end of each is a coat hanger fashioned into a small loop and duct-taped securely – you can’t stress the word “securely” enough in this type of thing – to the stick. Resting inside each coat-hanger loop is a specimen cup.
Thursday, as a goat competition ended and ribbons were handed out, Beiter and five others moved quickly into the show ring. Each volunteer claimed one of the six champion or reserve-champion goats. Then they ushered the goats and their handlers from the ring and the 18 of them – six handlers, six sample-collectors and six goats – began the traditional urine-test parade, winding their way through the exhibit hall to the testing area.
Beiter would be responsible for a goat named Centennial, the reserve champion in the heavyweight division. Centennial, an 11-month-old Boer owned by 14-year-old Bonnie Wallace of Lampasas, Texas, had earned his ribbon after close and nerve-racking inspection by veteran goat judge Marvin Ensor of San Angelo, Texas.
But nothing would be official until Beiter and the rest of the collectors had done their work. And inside small corrals in the testing area, each collector knelt beside a goat and waited. And waited.
“I’ve taken samples from goats, sheep and pigs,” Beiter said, balancing the stick across her knees and waiting for Centennial to make his move. “There’s an old trick where you put your fingers in their nose for just a second. It startles them, and they pee. But it only works on goats.”
Which is good news for anyone who has a real prankster as a roommate.
Anyway, Beiter did not have to employ this trick on Centennial. After about five minutes, the big goat heard the call of nature. Beiter moved quickly, positioning herself to Centennial’s left and reaching out with the stick, placing the cup beneath him. A moment later, however, Centennial decided he’d like to walk as he relieved himself. This forced Beiter to move quickly to her right and, to use the old expression, “go with the flow.”
Soon, Centennial’s specimen cup was full. With great concentration, Beiter stood up and headed for the gate, the stick held out in front of her as people scattered. She took 12 steps, didn’t spill a drop and delivered the cup graciously – as graciously as you can deliver a cup of goat urine on a stick – to a table where drug-testing officials sat. The officials had clipboards to record each sample next to the goat donor’s registration number. Just as importantly, they also had the cup lids.
“That went well,” said Beiter, her cupless stick now balanced on her right shoulder. “Sometimes it takes them forever to go. Sometimes they go right away. Depends on the goat.”
Overseeing the process was National Western Stock Show veterinarian Ron Ackerman, now in his sixth year with that duty.
“We are looking,” he said, “for anything that would give an animal an advantage, a steroid or banned substance that would help an animal develop muscle. In the past few years we’ve found that kind of thing in only a very small percentage of animals.”
Once in a while, he said, drug testers do find a much less harmful drug – although still illegal – in the livestock.
“Caffeine,” Ackerman said. “What happens is an animal won’t drink the water because it tastes different than back on the farm. So a kid will pour a little soda from a can into the bowl of water, which makes it taste better. Some soda has caffeine, and that’s banned.”
Because what stock show officials definitely don’t want is a herd of prized show goats all cranked up on caffeine.
Although if human biology is any guideline, a 22-ounce cup of coffee would certainly speed up the specimen-gathering process.
Staff writer Rich Tosches writes each Wednesday and Sunday. He can be reached at rtosches@ denverpost.com.
