FFA and the Panhandle Youth Expo

With moving to a new city, and a new school comes opportunities to become involved in activities/organizations. This year Tyler has done just that. In the past he had never shown an interest in anything related to agriculture so it really surprised me when he wanted to join FFA and told us that he would like to show his FFA chapters Beef Heifer in the Panhandle Youth Expo.
He started showing this interest when school started and one of his classes is Agricultural Science. I really didn’t think that he would be very interested in this class, that it would be just another class he had. Would do the work, make a good grade and that would be it. Well to my surprise he would come home after football practice and talk about what they did that day in Ag Science. One of the things that really helps out for this class, is that they are not just sitting in a classroom all the time. The teacher (Mr. Mauldin) takes them outside for a hands on approach and they LEARN.
So a few weeks into the school year, Tyler informs us that he wants to join FFA. So he gets his money turned in and then a couple of days later he came home telling us that the girl that was supposed to be showing the FFA chapter beef cow wasn’t going to do it, and he had been leading the cow around some and everyone kept telling him that he was doing real good. Well long story short, Mr. Mauldin talked with Tyler and it was decided that Tyler would be the one to show the cow. He only had a few weeks to work with this cow before the show.
On Monday, (the 8th of October) Tyler was up early to get on down to the fairgrounds. He wanted to get checked in and get started with this cow showing business. He showed the cow on Tuesday afternoon for the Beef Showmanship Contest. For it being his first time, he did really well. While he didn’t come in 1st or 2nd place, we were very proud of him. He actually came in 4th, but they only acknowledge 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place. He did get a participant ribbon though.


Wednesday they had the Breeding Beef Show. There were only four cows in the group that Tyler showed in on this day. His cow came in fourth place. One thing that the judge said about his cow (and some others in different groups) was that it looked to “cowy”. That night after we got home, Tyler was like, “how can a cow look too cowy?” He said he was fine with it, but really I think he was disappointed.