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4-H Skillathon and Livestock Teams Excel at
Nationals
By
Carol L. Spence
 LEXINGTON,
Ky., (Dec. 5, 2007) –The state 4-H skillathon and gold livestock
judging teams competed against teams from across the country at
the North American International Livestock Exposition in
Louisville recently and showed them what Kentucky 4-H’ers could
do.
The Christian County 4-H skillathon team took home the 2007
National Championship. This is the third time in the 8-year
history of the national skillathon contest that a Kentucky team
has been named national champion. Toni Riley, University of
Kentucky Cooperative Extension 4-H youth development agent in
Christian County, coached the team that included her daughters,
UK sophomore Elizabeth Riley and Christian County High School
senior Catherine Riley and Cory Wallace, a Christian County High
School junior.
4-H skillathon competitions cover the whole gamut of livestock
production expertise involving beef cattle, sheep, swine and
goats: breed identification, identification of retail meat cuts,
feeds, equipment, judging meats and hay, calculations for
average daily gain, feed efficiency and profit margin, among
other areas of knowledge. The competition includes both
individual and team events, which are all added together to
arrive at the overall team score.
“What they’re really doing at the nationals is trying to take
all that information and put it in a practical package for these
young people,” Toni Riley said.
Riley and her team worked closely with Clark County, who
represented the state in the 2006 national competition. She said
it was especially important to them that they be “mentally
prepared” for the team events, because the state competition
does not include them.
“I was really hesitant about what we were going to do because
we’d never seen it, never done it,” she said. “But once we
talked through it, well the kids just did great and that’s
really what helped them win the contest. They did really well in
the team activity.”
Riley said the team did well in one team event in particular,
receiving 115 out of 125 points in the meat judging competition,
and “we need to thank Gregg Rentfrow in the meat department
because he worked with us a lot.”
In the quality assurance event, another team activity, the
threesome had to remove a lamb from a pen, determine the ear tag
identification number, recognize the scrapie tag, weigh the
animal, convert the weight to kilograms, calculate the average
daily gain, measure and administer a drench dosage and trim its
hooves. The team received 99 out of a possible 100 points.
The Christian County team members have been involved in 4-H
skillathons since they were 9 years old. Their experience and
hard work carried them to national prominence in the field.
Catherine Riley won first place individual in identification.
She was tenth overall. Her sister Elizabeth was second overall.
The team, as a whole, was consistent. Toni Riley thinks their
consistency was crucial to their triumph over the other 13 teams
in the competition.
“Elizabeth was sixth in every single category. Then we got a
couple of team calls in the team awards, but again we were
really consistent. We were third in one, fourth in one and sixth
in one,” she said.
And when all was said and done, the team of Riley, Riley and
Wallace was first in the nation.
 The
next day, the 4-H state livestock judging team, known as the
Gold Team, faced off against 33 states and 132 competitors in
the National 4-H Livestock Judging Contest. This year’s Gold
Team was made up of Katie Caudill of Montgomery County, Cassie
Hendon, Calloway County, Colleen Rouse, Boone County and Leslie
Reynolds from Boyle County. Members of the eight-member state
livestock judging team are selected from the top 20 contenders
at the state 4-H livestock judging contests in June. They spend
the summer in training with UK coaches Richard Coffey, extension
swine specialist, and Jason P’Pool, extension associate for
youth livestock programs.
In livestock judging, individual team members rank four animals
in a class, based on the animal’s conformation. They are then
required to give oral explanations of their decisions. Classes
include beef cattle, sheep and swine.
After the state fair in August, the eight 4-H’ers who make the
team traveled to the World Beef Expo in Milwaukee, Wi., the
Eastern National Livestock Show in Timonium, Md. and the
Keystone International Livestock Exposition in Harrisburg, Pa.
In Maryland, Katie Caudill took High Individual in beef cattle
and the two four-man teams finished third and fifth overall and
finished in fifth place overall in Milwaukee. At the Keystone, a
team made of Katie Caudill, Logan Goggin, Cassie Hendon and
Colby Myers took first place overall, and Cassie Hendon won High
Individual overall. Four members of the eight-member state team
went on to compete in nationals at the North American in
Louisville, where Katie Caudill finished eighteenth overall and
was one of twenty All American Award winners. Cassie Hendon, who
finished 27th High Individual overall, was only 4 points out of
800 away from finishing in the Top 20.
But it’s not necessarily about rankings alone. According to
Riley and P’Pool, the lessons young people learn from
competitions like these go far beyond the show ring or livestock
facility.
“It teaches them to make decisions, and it teaches them to
defend those decisions,” Riley said. “And they have to work
together as a team.”
“The 4-H youth livestock program makes great young livestock
people, but more importantly, it makes great young people,”
P’Pool said. “If they never own an animal or have any livestock
the rest of their lives, the connections they’ve made, the
skills they’ve learned in communications and teamwork and
sacrifice will go with them their whole lives.”
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Contact: Toni Riley, 270-886-6328
Jason P’Pool, 270-928-2168
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The UK College of Agriculture,
through its land-grant mission, reaches across the commonwealth
with teaching, research and extension
to enhance the lives of
Kentuckians. |
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