WTAMU Agricultural Education majors team up with freshmen in an effort to learn more about livestock and leadership as they prepare for The Little International stock show.
Approximately 145 students from two sections of Dr. David Lust’s ANSC 1319 animal science course have already begun training for the two-day competition that will be held on Oct. 11 and 12 at the Nance Ranch.
“We’ve moved the Little I to the fall semester because a large percentage of the animal science classes are first semester freshman and we are very eager to engage those students, to help them build relationships with each other and with upperclassman,” Dr Lust said.
Students are broken up into ten teams and each team will be assigned two seniors from Dr. Kevin Williams’ AGRI 4305 Supervised Ag Experiences course to help train and educate members from the ANSC 1319 class.
“They’re dealing with freshman students which are just one year out of high school,” Williams said. “We’re just trying to mock that first years teaching experience as much as we can.”
The upperclassmen have been putting together lecture information since the beginning of Sept. and the freshmen have been training since the last week of Sept. for a competition that is based mostly on showmanship.
“It’s emphasis is to teach basic livestock handling skills and showmanship skills, and embodied in that would be some basic care of animals,” Lusk said. “It’s very common in showmanship for a judge to ask questions about the animal and that could be breeds or strengths or just common knowledge about the animal.”
A judge will score them primarily based on showmanship skills which includes how well the animal is presented and how well the student is able to answer any questions the judge may have for the individual.
Monique Figueroa, freshman, said she thinks Little I is interesting and has provided her with the opportunity to work with animals she hadn’t worked with in the past.
“I’ve only shown goats, and I’ve always wanted to know what it was like to show other animals, so this is my chance,” Figueroa said.
To ensure that each and every student receives adequate training for the competition, a mandatory animal welfare and safety training clinic is required in addition to the training and clinics that is provided by the upperclassmen group leaders.
In addition to showing livestock, this year students have the option of participating in a quiz bowl orchestrated by Kyndal Reed, a senior Ag Education major. In this event, students will form teams of five where they will face other teams
in a tournament style competition. The students will answer questions over a broad spectrum of topics ranging from breed identification to physiological information specific to each species.
“Some students because of scheduling or possibly medical or physical or some other reason can’t participate in the working with the animals then they still have the quiz bowl activity that they can participate in,” Lust said.
Several hours of preparation and teaching have gone into this event from both upper as well as underclassmen, but according to Juan Cantu, senior ag education major it is time well spent.
“The best part is seeing the kids getting excited about coming out here and wanting to learn and seeing the kids who thought they didn’t want to learn call you up and ask you when can we do this again,” Cantu said ”It’s nice to know you gave them a good experience.”
The Little I gets its name from the International Livestock Exposition which is still one of the nation’s most important livestock shows. The International Livestock Exposition was originally held in Chicago and is currently held in Louisville, KY. It is the nation’s oldest livestock show dating back to 1903. Agricultural and animal science programs at several universities around the United States hold a little international showmanship competition.
West Texas A&M has designed their specific Little I program to provide better teaching experiences to the universities upperclassmen, provide a great learning experience for the underclassmen and to make this function as fun as possible.
The competition will be held at the Nance Ranch located at 3450 East Nance Road on Oct. 11-12 from 1 to 6 p.m. and is open to the public.
