Bowling Green, Ky. - The Western Kentucky University Dairy Challenge Team participated in the Southern Region North American Intercollegiate Dairy Challenge contest Nov. 19-21 at Roanoke, Va.

The regional contests are training sessions for the national contest held in March each year. Other schools participating in the regional event included contest host Virginia Tech, Clemson, Florida, Alabama A&M, North Carolina State, Georgia, Ferrum College and LSU.

The contest challenges students to find bottlenecks or areas of less than optimum management on large commercial dairy farms.

At the regional contests, students are assigned to teams made up of four or five students each from a different school. This allows students to interact with students from other schools and they use team-building skills acquired at WKU. The contest attracted 41 students, enough to have four four-person teams and five five-person teams.

WKU student Britni Thornburg, a junior from Winchester, Ind., was a member of the first-place team. Other WKU participants were John Laster, an Elkton sophomore, third-place team; Megan Halcomb, a Hanson sophomore, seventh-place team; and Steven Southworth, a freshman from Oakland City, Ind., eighth-place team. Jenks Britt, agriculture faculty member, is the team’s coach.

During the contest students visit dairy farms, observe the facilities, talk to the managers and look at the production and financial records for the contest farms. Students are then allowed a six-hour period to work together to determine the weaknesses found on the farm and to make recommendations to correct the problems. The next day each team makes a 20-minute presentation to a panel of expert judges of their findings and how they might address the problems. The judges use scoring sheet to rank each team and have a 20-minute period to ask each team a series of questions.

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