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How to Prepare for a 4-H Dairy Cattle Judging Contest

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Dairy Cattle Judging Class.

Are you preparing for the State 4-H Dairy Judging Contest? Maybe you are stuck inside and can’t get your club together on the farm. In this day of online learning, there are many options for helping our 4-H members prepare for contests and events. Consider using these resources.

  1. The National Holstein Foundation Judging Workbook is an excellent guide for both beginners and coaches. This resource can be downloaded for free from the Holstein Foundation. Youth need not be a Holstein Association member to access this resource.
  2. Here is another publication that also goes over the parts of the Purebred Dairy Cattle Association (PDCA) Unified Scorecard and has a nice list of dairy judging terminology at the end. This will be helpful for those youth who may need to improve their reasons scores.
  3. In addition, if you can’t get to see real live cattle or get access to all of the breeds you want to judge, try these excellent Dairy Judging Videos by Katherine Knowlton from Virginia Tech.
  4. For those youth that are a little more advanced, the University of Wisconsin has posted videos from several years of the National 4-H Dairy Cattle Judging Contest classes.

Good luck with your dairy judging teams. I hope that these resources will be helpful to all of you!

By Carol K. Ward, Somerset County 4-H Agent, Rutgers Cooperative Extension.