ring. Honestly, I would like to thank my family and anyone who has ever helped over the years so much for all the opportunities they have given me. I would not be where I am today without their support and guidance. Also, showing in 4-H has taught me how to work with many species other than cattle. A few years ago, I became interested in showing pigs. So, we built a little pen, set up an automatic waterer, and an automatic feeder for the pigs I bought for the county fair. Showing pigs taught me how to start a project from scratch as my family had never shown pigs before and had very little experience feeding them. I certainly learned a great deal about pigs fast because I had some success in my first few years winning the market hog show and showmanship at my county fair. My experience with multiple species helped greatly with my livestock judging ability. In FFA, I had a great deal of success getting 10th overall at the state FFA livestock judging contest my freshman year. My State FFA Team had won the contest and we went to the National FFA Livestock Judging Contest in Louisville that same year. Since then, I competed in many livestock judging contests judging collegiately at Butler and Kansas State. Evaluating livestock is very important and useful to me. I want to make sure I am staying on the right track when picking out
the correct livestock to show and feed them to the correct point before the show. However, more importantly, I have found that judging collegiately has given me confidence in my own opinion or humbles me when I get off base. As Harlan Richie says, “Judging instills the confidence in those people who may be timid and humbles those who tend to be conceited”. I know I am not perfect, but I still try to do my best to judge livestock honestly and with integrity because in the end I will come before the greatest judge of all, our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Another competition that fuels my drive to work with livestock is showmanship. This is surprising that I write this after being adamant when I was younger that it was my least favorite part of the show. But I worked at it because I understood that if I showed well my cattle could place higher in the ring. As I matured, it became clear to me that showmanship was the more impressive show to win especially at Junior Nationals. I worked harder than ever the first year I was in Senior Showmanship at Grand Island. But I walked into the ring far too intensely and did not even make the cut. All my hard work for no recognition… I realized over the next year that showmanship like everything else in life was a balance between intensity and being calm no matter how your animal behaves. I
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