Judge Us, We're Just Hanging Around

Thursday afternoon at the Robeson Regional Agricultural Fair is a traditional agriculture type of day. It is the day when the FFA youth get out early and have a chance to take part in tractor driving and pulls as well as Poultry Judging.  Poultry judging has nothing to do with a trial and jury, it has to do with grading chickens and eggs in a variety of forms.  Teams of two, three and four people compete in 6 areas to see which team has the overall best score.  The areas are past production hens, oral reasons, breakout eggs, interior eggs, cut up chicken pieces and carcass quality.  If you don't know what is going on in the livestock building you will not understand why we cut up chickens, or have whole cooking chickens hanging up from the tops of the holding pens in the show ring.  But for the youth who took part this year, it was a lot of fun and a great learning experience.
  This year we had 90 youth, from three counties, who signed up to participate in the Junior and Senior Divisions combined.  Those 90 youth made up 21 different teams.  After an hour in the rotation of stations and not being able to talk to each other a group of volunteers worked diligently to judge all their sheets and we came up with the following winners:  In the junior division which is made up of 9-13 year olds in the individual competition, Rebbecca Murray came in third, Amelia Murray second and Alexandria Evans first.  In the junior team division the one and only team competing, the Cumberland County team of Emily Neville, Rebbecca Murry, Amelia Murry, and Mary Ellen Collier took home the first place trophy.
  It got heated in the senior division as two members of the 4-H/FFA state team took home individual trophies.  Jackie Cunao took home the third place trophy while Rosie Diaz, who had the highest individual score of the competition took home the first place trophy.  Both Cunao and Diaz were on the state 4-H poultry team.  Morgan Jackson took home the second place trophy.  In the senior team division the competition was on.  Third place went to the Super Heroes team from St. Paul's FFA made up of Malcolm Hill, Rodney Harrelson, and C.J. Braden.  The second place trophy went to the Super Gansta Ninja team from St. Paul's High School FFA made up of Morgan Jackson, Keri Kinlaw, and Triston Chagolla.  The top team of the competition with an average score of 413 was the combined 4-H/FFA poultry judging team made up of Dustin Nance, Rosie Diaz, and Jackie Cunao.  Congratulations to all of our winners this year!