For the lay person, who has little idea what livestock judging at the collegiate level entails, Buddy Curry has a tip: “Think of it as a debate team with an animal influence.”
Curry, recently named Allen Community College’s new livestock judging coach and “ag careers specialist,” arrives at the Iola campus with a long menu of credentials, a blue-chip history in competitive judging and no shortage of zeal for lifting the already successful ACC ag program to still new heights.
Passing the cases of sports trophies at the college earlier this month, Curry was brimful of optimism. “Hopefully, we’ll have to turn around and buy more cases. I’d like a string of our trophies all the way down the hall.”
DESPITE the sometimes dusty, manure-flecked setting, livestock judging is as rigorous an academic pursuit as any other, insists Curry, and requires of its students the same clarity of thought, articulacy, cargo of specialized learning and quick-wittedness that define the best debate teams.
Here’s the crude version of what a judging event looks like: The student is asked to evaluate the animal — nearly always cattle, sheep, goats and hogs — and rank them based on industry-defined criteria.
Participants are focused, in the main, on two categories. “Basically,” explains Curry, “if it’s a breeding stock, you look at how it’s going to relate itself back to being utilized in the herd and how it will improve the herd’s overall performance. And if it’s a market-oriented animal — how is it going to provide quality meat products for the consumer?”
Having assessed the animal and ranked it within its class, the student then enters into the section of the event called “oral reasons” — the debate-like portion of the livestock competion — which requires the student to convince an industry official that his or her placing is logical and accurate.
“Probably the best thing students get from livestock judging is actually oral reasons,” explains Curry. “We’re teaching them to be able to defend their decisions and defend them in persuasive ways.
“Basically, the first thing you’ve got to do is get them to understand that they will someday have an influence in the industry by going through this. This is where a lot of the standards are set for each one of the species within the industry.
“There was a study done several years ago by some of the land-grant institutions: The first 20 kids hired out of each one of those land-grant colleges, out of their ag programs, were on some kind of competitive judging team that included oral reasons.”
And the roster of jobs available to those students is more diverse than one might suspect. “A friend of mine who graduated with me from [Northeastern Oklahoma A&M] is a lawyer now in Dallas. You’d be surprised at how much of a natural next-step it is. He’s got to go into the courtroom and argue his case, and he’s got to be persuasive.”
WITH THE SALE of the ACC farm set for July 30, the college has, according to campus dean Tosca Harris, “changed the focus of [Curry’s] position. Whereas the position before dealt with farm management, Buddy will now become our ag careers specialist. He will be working more with the students directly, helping them get placement in their career field .
“We also look for Buddy to make the connections in the community with our area farmers and ranchers, and to be able to direct students to those facilities to work with our local agricultural people.”
Curry will also be in charge of recruitment — not only for livestock judging but for the ACC ag program as a whole. “It’s about getting out and getting to know the students. Not just picking the kids that are seniors in high school, but actually getting to know the kids at a younger age, and helping them get to know me so that, later on, they’re comfortable becoming a Red Devil.
