Doing Toplines is a MUST when showing dairy cattle!

Showing animals at the fair can be very time consuming!  In order to get a dairy cow ready, it takes a lot of effort - this morning, blowing up toplines took most of my time!

Toplines on cattle are very important for a show because they improves the animal's angularity and straightens their back.  In order to get a topline ready, you need the following items:

• Stiff tail brush
• Hair dryer (aka "Blower")
• Soft grooming brush
• Clear Magic (very strong hairspray)
• Black Magic (basically like black spray paint)
• Body Clippers
• Topline Clippers
• Scissors

To do a topline, you must first use the tail brush and hair dryer to blow the animals hair up on their topline.  Second, you must take the body clippers and cut in a straight and sharp manner starting at the the back of the animal's topline and ending at the front of their body (when making this cut, you angle the clippers so that the hair comes to a point in the center of the animal's back).  You must then repeat the first and second steps on both sides of the animal's body.  After these steps, spray the topline with Clear Magic.  Using the topline clippers, go over the top of the topline to trim off any stray hairs.  Last, you want to paint the topline with spray paint that matches the color of the animal's hair (if you are working on a Holstein, use Black Magic).  It's important to use the spray paint because the Clear Magic leaves a white residue on the hair and you don't want your animal to enter the show ring with a white topline!  Last, you'll want to use topline scissors to trim the hair on the tail.

It's important to remember that if you try it a few times and it doesn't look as good as you'd like for it to, that you need to keep practicing - I've been doing toplines for 4 years!

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Author Tyler Topp is 18 years old and is a Senior at Northwestern High School where he plays football and wrestles.  He is a member of the Northwestern FFA Chapter and will be participating in the American FFA Association's national dairy judging contest.  On the farm, Tyler is responsible for milking and feeding cows in the milking herd.