26 NEBRASKA CATTLEMAN June/July 2024 More Than Just Livestock Livestock Judging Teaches Youth Life Skills KELSEY POPE | CONTRIBUTING WRITER A positive byproduct of youth livestock judging competitions is developing skills for a lifetime. Students and coaches alike involved in livestock judging repeatedly acknowledge the values they learn from both evaluating livestock and justifying the reasons for their decisions. Livestock Judging 101 Livestock judging is a contest for youth in agriculture to sort through a set of four animals in a class, place them from most desirable to least desirable and compare their placings against those of industry judging experts. Students have approximately 15 minutes to look through each class and provide placings for those animals. They then give verbal reasons on some of the classes as to why they placed the class in that order using appropriate industry terms. Classes consist of breeding and market pens of four animal species: cattle, swine, sheep and goats. Additional types of judging exist, like horse, meats, dairy and wool judging. Youth can start competing in 4-H livestock judging as early as eight years old. There are junior and senior levels in 4-H, whereas FFA livestock judging consists of high school students. At the collegiate level, there are separate categories for junior colleges and universities. Mike Roeber has been coaching livestock judging and teaching at Northeast Community College in Norfolk for 27 years. He says the biggest difference from high school to college judging is the number of classes and intensity of the contests. In judging contests at the 4-H and FFA level, there are usually 10 to 12 classes with three to five sets of reasons given. Moving up to the college level, the intensity increases, the classes are more challenging and participants may give up to eight sets of reasons. “As kids advance in their livestock judging career, the rigor intensifies,” Roeber says. “You need to be a lot more complete in what you tell the reason takers and just have a broader base of knowledge and terminology to use along the way.” Youth sort through livestock classes at a local livestock judging competition and take notes that will be used in oral reasons later in the contest. The skills youth learn from participating in this event include communication skills, decision-making skills, visual appraisal skills and time management. Photos courtesy of Tessa Ringlein. www.rtphotographybytessa.com PRODUCTION
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