By: Sheila Crowley
Murray County News Staffwriter
Feel the Thunder…Experience horsepower like it was intended. Featuring the workhorses of yesteryear, the Murray County Classic Draft Horse Show offers the beauty, grandeur and sheer force of today’s draft horses.
The 2019 Murray County Draft Horse Show, July 12,13, and 14th, featuring the cart, team, unicorn, 4-horse and 6-horse hitch classes. The draft horse competition will be held at the Murray County Fairgrounds located in Slayton, Minnesota. You do not want to miss the fun!
Over the 12 years, Jeff Kiewatt as served as ringman for each of the events. The voice of the show is Keith Tongen – who also has been a part of the show since inception. Judging this year’s competition is Bryant Hagemann of Stillman Valley, Illinois.
The draft horse committee members work diligently throughout the year to make sure the show happens each second weekend in July. What started out as just a group of southwestern Minnesota draft horse friends getting together to practice driving has developed into one of the largest draft horse shows in the Upper Midwest.
In 2007, about a dozen men and women, each with a long history of draft horses, brainstormed about a way to share their knowledge of the skills, talents and disposition of draft horse breeds. Over the years, their enthusiasm to showcase the breeds for both farm work purposes and show ring action has developed into a major equine event.
The initial idea was to have a day teams would get together and kind of help each other out – judging and deciding how to improve the team. With no shows til the end of July, this gave those competitors an edge and helping them get ready for the upcoming busy season.
“Once the group actually got to planning the event, it went from a practice run to a show to a point show,” said Joe Biren, committee member.
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