LOUISVILLE, Ky. — While most of us think of a trip to the Kentucky State Fair as an outing that only lasts a few hours, for those showing animals, it’s an around the clock, multi-day commitment.

“Show mornings we get up at four, non-show mornings about eight, seven o’clock,” Kaylee Cocanougher, a 12-year-old from Harrodsburg, who is back at the state fair showing dairy cows.

Like everyone up and down the rows of bovines, Cocanougher and Tripp Popplewell will spend the rest of the fair sleeping and living just feet away from their cows.

“We have all our bags, everything that we need to sleep in. We have a fan because it gets hot,” Cocanougher said, describing her home for the next several days.

It’s not a five-star hotel, but roughing it is what it takes to take home the gold, or in thi

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