Competitions thus far!

Sorry guys but this is going to be a long one!

My livestock Judging team consists of 7 people including myself and 2 coaches. I am also on the Meat Animal Evaluation Team. This team consists of the same 7 people on the Livestock team plus one more and 3 coaches. The students on these teams are all juniors (3rd years) at the U of I and have experience in livestock judging through youth programs such as 4H and in community college, as well as being from varying agricultural backgrounds. This makes for a dynamic and talented team.

Training:
Typically training begins at 3pm every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday and can go until 8pm. We train at the farms on campus, in the meat lab on campus, or we travel out to other establishments. We also train on Saturdays that we don't have competitions. These can run all day and sometimes we do mock competition with high school students. We train for all aspects of both types of competitions -they will be explained further down.

Sioux Falls, South Dakota
This competition was on the first weekend that I was in Illinois. In order to get a grasp of the competition structure here, I just observed. We left the day before and on the way over to South Dakota we stopped at a couple of cattle properties to practice. That night I sat in on my other team members giving their reasons as practice. The morning of the competition, we arrived at the venue at 8am to register. Competitors are then assigned groups. There was 2 sessions of 6 classes. They had to place 6 classes and then give reasons on 6 others as well as place them. Classes consisted of: bulls, show steers, sheep, pigs, and goats. You have around 7 minutes at each class before handing in your cards and then moving on to the next class. Depending on the number or people competing it can get very challenging to get a good view of class. Once the students have finished rotating around all the classes, they are then taken to another venue to give reasons. In this case it was on the same property.

Sioux Falls, Goat class - hands on allowed

Here they are all seated and given an order and sequence of rooms to go give their reasons in. Generally competitors have about 20 minutes between delivering each set. When giving reasons you enter the given room and deliver your set to one person. Generally you aim to make it around 1 minute 45 seconds long. It is very particular how you deliver these sets, not just what you deliver. It is important to give a confident impression, so competitors stand with hands behind their backs, project their voices, and maintain eye contact with the reasons taker. There is also a formula as such as to how you present your reasons. Beginning with your placing, then describe your 1st placed animal, grant the 2nd placed animal, then reasons why the 2nd placed animal came 2nd. Then you move onto 2nd vs 3rd etc. It is all about accuracy and creativity. You need to be able to create a picture of the animal you are describing and include some emotive language to persuade the reasons taker that your placing is best. Reasons are scored out of 50, and it is possible to get a high score even if you did not place exactly the same way as the committee.

Sioux Falls, Sheep class- always slick shorn with leg warmers

It is quite nerve racking and it is very different to our more conversational style competitions. While it is different and doesn't quite prepare their competitors for judging real shows, it really makes you think about what you are saying and to confidently describe the whole animal, not just what you used to place the class.
These competitions generally last all day, and in this case, didn't finish until 5pm, when we went straight back to Champaign.

Sioux Falls, Hog class-short, stocky animals

Iowa Beef Expo:
The next weekend we traveled to Iowa Beef Expo to compete. This was the be my first competition, and man was I nervous!! The format was pretty much all the same, except this time we only judged cattle. There were lots of competitors as college students were competing with juniors at the same time (some as young as 8). You had to really fight to get a good spot and then you couldn't move to get any other angle. We had many breeds as well as a mix of bulls, heifers, steers, market animals and show animals (called club animals here).

Iowa, Heifer class for practice

We arrived at the local high school to prepare reasons, lunch was provided, but like most people I couldn't stomach anything. Going in to deliver my first set I was very nervous and my delivery was less than perfect with a lot of stuttering and breaks in flow. However I found after giving a couple of sets my nerves disappeared and I was able to deliver them fluently and with confidence. I thought that delivering the sets without notes would be difficult but when you create a mental image of the class it isn't so hard.

Iowa, Shorthorn class for practice

When registering the coaches have to nominate a team of 5 who's scores will contribute to the University's score and the remaining competitors for the University compete as individuals and can still get awards. At this competition U of I got 4th overall and no individual awards.
It is very competitive, with some students being drafted by universities and community colleges to judge on their teams. The individual winner of this particular competition only dropped a total of 12 points for the whole competition. Upon arriving back at Champaign everyone was exhausted; it is a full on day of constant thinking, judging and recalling.

Meat Animal Evaluation Contest - Madison, Wisconsin
This is a different type of contest. It spans 2 days. The first day competitors evaluate, judge, and answer questions on breeding animals. Estimate things such as dressing %, Rib eye area, back fat, and Kidney heart and Pelvic fat, as well as price and rank market animals (cattle, sheep and pigs). The second day is judging carcasses. It is a lot like our Meat Judging competition. We judging beef, lamb and pork, do estimates, answer questions, and place carcasses and retail cuts. Competitors are scored on their ability to answer questions, predict the carcass traits of market animals (actually measured against final carcass) and their ability to estimate carcasses.

Practice comp at Illinois Beef Expo

On the way up to Wisconsin we stopped in at Jocelyn slaughter plant, which is a beef plant, to practice our beef grading. Everything here is measured in inches and their quality grading is different to ours. I haven't found the change over too difficult as I had some practice doing this in Brisbane as part of the Top 10 for Intercollegiate Meat Judging.

These competitions, whilst not having the stress of giving reasons, also require you to take very good notes on classes, as questions are not asked until the end of the day. The pressure of judging a class is also high as you are having to price animals etc using formulas that you have to remember and under time pressure. This competition is all about strategy to gain the most points and learning to look for certain things to answer predictable questions. My meat judging experience has definitely helped in this competition type.
The U of I Livestock team has to also compete as part of this team as it helps to angle your view of animals to more finite details as well apply the knowledge of livestock in a terminal sense.

One of the great places we get to stop at on road trips.

Travelling almost every weekend with the judging teams has enabled me to see to much of the US already and to visit many fabulous properties with outstanding livestock. Spending many hours on the bus with the judging team has lead us to forge strong friendships and I have learnt much about agriculture in America through them, especially with a youth focus.
Since I've arrived in America my knowledge of livestock has increased exponentially, especially my knowledge of sheep, pigs, and goats. It is completely different over here and I believe it will help me in my future endeavors. While it is nerve racking to have a reputation to withhold and to learn a whole new style of judging I really do believe I will be a better judge because of it. There are no words to describe just how valuable this experience really is. Everyone with an interest in livestock should definitely apply for this scholarship or any of the others that Angus Australia has to offer.
-Until next time, L. Grubb