Poultry, rabbits, kiddie land, carnival games — the Kalamazoo County Fair opens Tuesday at the Kalamazoo County Expo Center. Mandy Eldred, facility and event services manager for Kalamazoo County Parks and Expo Center, joins Cara Lieurance to preview what’s in store.
Eldred, who has worked for the county for 17 years, oversees the Expo Center’s roughly 60,000 square feet of floor space and 120 acres of grounds year-round, hosting everything from dog shows to reptile expos, craft fairs to car shows. The Kalamazoo County Fair is five days long, starting Tuesday, Aug 4.
The fair’s first two days are dedicated to 4-H livestock and exhibit judging, when kids show off pigs, rabbits, poultry, sheep, goats, steer, feeder calves and horses after months of raising and training them. “The ultimate end goal is that they get to bring them to fair and show them,” Eldred says, adding that they coordinate with 4-H to handle the shows themselves while her staff preps and sanitizes the spaces for animals and visitors…