Four Greene County 4-H’ers are headed out of state for a livestock judging contest.

Greene County ISU Extension 4-H and Youth Coordinator Samantha Hardaway says the senior livestock judging team of Hanna Fouch, Paisley Lautner, Breanna Pope, and Chloe Julick will be in Stewart, Nebraska for a sheep judging competition at Burch Livestock.

“We’ve worked with Colby a lot, the owner of Burch Livestock, and he’s helped us just learn from a more structural standpoint on sheep and how to judge them, and he is hosting a contest at his place. So we have a group of girls headed down to go judge there and excited to see what they learn.”

Hardaway points out the senior team was most recently at the Iowa Pork Producers Youth Livestock Judging Contest in November, where they placed 20th out of 127 teams. Additionally, Hardaway states Lautner was 50th individually in her division out of 487 participants. She notes that these girls have been together, off and on, for over one year and they are finding their stride.

“Our senior team is putting in a lot of work and I really commend them for all their hard work. Especially our senior team, there’s several kids that want to pursue this collegiately and so we’re really wanting to put in time for them to have that opportunity if they want.”  

Hardaway adds tomorrow’s contest will be a great warm-up to their next major competition in February at the Iowa Beef Expo.