Daily Pioneer News

PLATTEVILLE - On Friday, Jan. 14, four University of Wisconsin-Platteville agriculture students and their advisor, Michael Mee, left the blistery snows of Wisconsin and traveled 1,952 miles south to Fort Worth, Texas. UWP students Jason James, Nick Tetzlaff, Michelle Jordan and Katie Reichling traveled to compete at the 2005 Southwestern Exposition and Livestock Show, a national collegiate dairy judging contest. The students placed first overall in the competition with 1,933 points beating five other colleges including UW-Madison and Texas A&M.

Each student judged 10 classes of dairy cattle. Each breed consists of a cow and heifer class, with each class containing four animals. Each animal is ranked in five categories including udder, feet and legs, body capacity, dairy character and frame. Contestants have 15 minutes to judge and place each class. Four of the classes are selected for contestants to take notes on, which they must then develop into an oral set of reasons to present in a two minute speech to an official breed judge.

The students are each scored individually with the top three scores combined for an overall team score. The UWP dairy team placed second in the Guernsey breed, first in the Holstein breed, second in the Jersey breed, first in the Brown Swiss breed, and second in Oral Reasons. Individually, Jordan placed second overall, James placed third overall and Tetzlaff placed fourth overall.

Commented Dr. Michael Mee, advisor for the team, "I am very pleased with the students' performances at this contest. It was really fun and gave them a great opportunity to judge something different than Midwestern cattle. Also, the fact that three of our students placed in the top 10 individually at the competition says a lot for UWP."

Contact: Dr. Michael Mee, Agriculture, (608) 342-1754, mee@uwplatt.edu

Prepared by: Rachael Lehr, Public Relations, (608) 342-1194, lehrr@uwplatt.edu