Students adorned in glimmering belt buckles and the occasional cowboy hat flocked to UF’s Beef Teaching Unit to sharpen their livestock judging skills. If a moo or a bellow could be heard from the front porch of the building, it meant the kids were gathered around the pen engaged in a lesson.
From July 10 to July 13, kids aged 8 to 18 passed through the doors of the UF/IFAS beef teaching unit for UF’s Livestock Judging Camp.
Debuting a different schedule for this year’s camp, co-coordinators Kyle Mendes and Allyson Trimble split the camp into three classes, creating agendas for beginner, intermediate and advanced students.
Trimble is an academic program specialist and UF livestock judging coach who started judging when she was 8 years old, a practice she stuck with through high school and college. She was on the UF Livestock Judging team in 2016 and graduated with her animal science degree in 2017.
Trimble grew up in Okeechobee with a passion for judging, in particular Brahman cattle, so it’s something she’s very passionate about, she said.
She has had experience with all aspects of judging, including being a contestant and an official.
The first day of camp was for the beginner and intermediate students from 8- to 12-years-old, with 25 kids in each group.
“They are kids that are just getting started in judging so we taught them [the beginner group] kind of how a contest runs, how judging works [and] taught them anatomy briefs,” Trimble said.
The intermediate group of students was introduced to reasons class, which had the students who knew more about the basics of judging. Trimble said the focus for this group was to teach them how to create and present the oral reasons for their judgment of the livestock.
“It’s really an awesome opportunity to be able to take what I love and get to do and make it into a job, so to speak, and then be able to share that information with students from all across the state,” Trimble said.
Kyle Mendes, a UF animal sciences lecturer, helped coordinate the camp with Trimble and also taught lessons at the camp with her. He grew up on his family farm in Modesto, California, raising livestock and graduated from Fresno University with a bachelor’s in agricultural education. He later graduated with a master’s in animal sciences at UF.
His favorite part about the camp is seeing the students overcome their struggles with the many nuances of judging and reasoning, especially public speaking.
“The students are learning how to judge and that means there’ll be four livestock in a pen, and they will evaluate them for those certain traits that are going to make the livestock most successful,” Mendes said.
For example, Mendes said some of the many ways they measure the success of the animal is by the way it moves or the amount of muscle it has.
“It is pretty pressure-packed, and it's pretty intense, but it's a great way kids learn those critical thinking skills and how to defend those answers,” Mendes said.
The youth in training are required to prepare a speech for officials explaining whether they think the livestock will be successful. This camp means to develop and grow the public speaking skills that are required to do this.
“It is tough, right? Public speaking is one of the biggest fears we have as a population, and so for those students to be anywhere from 10-years-old to 18-years-old and get up in front of a person who is an expert who they admire and respect, that’s really what I value,” Mendes said.
The advanced class had about 50 students. It started on July 11 and ended on July 13 with a mock contest to showcase their judging and reasoning abilities.
Plant City resident Cooper Davis, 17, was one of the students who participated in the advanced group and placed first in the overall individual awards.
Having judged for seven years and practiced his reasoning skills for the past four years, he was excited to expand his knowledge on livestock reasons at camp, he said.
Davis is one of the many students in the camp who hopes to pursue a career in the agriculture business.
“I actually own my own sheep operation down in Plant City, Florida. We just started it last year, so it’s something we definitely look forward to,” Davis said.
In 2023, Davis became the sole owner of his company, Davis Livestock. He said his dad runs the business aspects of it but he owns all of the sheep and plans on expanding.
“It’s one-of-a-kind, and you get to just meet a bunch of people and really see how good you are and get better at the same time,” Davis said.
Amie Imler, a UF animal sciences lecturer, was a volunteer at the camp. Imler teaches full time at the university but helps out with the youth livestock programs.
“I feel like there’s a lot of value to taking students at the elementary, middle school and high school level and instilling in them the importance of animal agriculture,” Imler said.
Prior to working at the university, she was a high school agriscience teacher at Union County High School, where she also coached livestock judging teams for middle and high school.
Though the camp is a youth program, it also allows middle and high school teachers and agriscience colleagues from around Florida to also listen in on the lessons, Imler said.
“This allows them an opportunity to bring students here where they can learn something, and the agents and teachers themselves can also learn while their students are,” she said.
With the many nuances of performing, judging and reasoning with livestock, the camp may be able to offer different perspectives for teachers as well.
“I think the exciting thing about teaching about agriculture early on is that you can get students excited about not just the actual production side of it but the other societal benefits of agriculture that sometimes aren’t always talked about,” Imler said.
Contact Kamala Rossi at krossi@alligator.org. Follow her on X @kamalarossi.
Kamala Rossi is a fourth-year journalism major and the Santa Fe reporter for The Alligator. When she's not writing, Kamala can be found surfing, watching movies and reading.
