WKU Team Second In
National Dairy Competition
April 17, 2003
Bowling Green, Ky. - Western Kentucky University agriculture students finished second in the 2003 North American Intercollegiate Dairy Challenge.
The WKU team of Chad Bishop, a Magnolia senior; Brandon Davis, a Greensburg junior; Brent Mays, a Greensburg senior; and Andy Pike, a Campbellsville senior, placed second behind Vermont Tech in the April 11-12 competition at Michigan State University. The team coach is Dr. Jenks Britt, head of WKU's Agriculture Department.
Twenty-four teams from top dairy schools in the United States competed in the Dairy Challenge at East Lansing, Mich.
The competition allows undergraduate students to evaluate management of dairy farms. Students are given a packet of records from the contest farms. These records include farm facilities, finance, crop production, feeding program, management of reproduction, replacement management, quality milk production, computer records, labor efficiency and other information.
The students are allowed a 90-minute on-site inspection of the dairy farm. The students get one 15-minute and one 12-minute question time with the farm manager.
After the farm visit, students are given a six-hour working session to review their information and prepare a 20-minute presentation for the contest judges. Each student must participate in the presentation. Teams are then ranked as silver, gold or platinum, and the two top teams are ranked first and second.
The judges gave the WKU team high marks for accuracy, presentation, equal team member participation and the correctness of answers given by the team to questions from the judges.
Western finished ahead of teams from Ohio State, Michigan State, Penn State, Iowa State, Wisconsin, Utah State, Minnesota, Idaho, Purdue, Florida, Texas A&M and Southern Illinois.
For more information, contact Dr. Jenks Britt at (270) 745-3151. More WKU news is available on the World Wide Web at www.wku.edu. If you'd like to receive WKU news via E-mail, send a message to WKUNews@wku.edu.
