DeWitt FFA Takes on the National Western Stock Show!

Written By Caden Bernauer.

On January 5th-11th, a group of DeWitt Central FFA Members earned the opportunity to travel and compete in the National Western Stock Show in Denver Colorado. The group included Senior Caden Bernauer, Senior Kyle Deppe, Senior Ty Henningsen, and Sophomore Audrina Gordon. They were coached and chaperoned by Douglas and Kim Deppe, and they received this opportunity from placing second at the FFA State Livestock Judging Contest. Following this on Tuesday, the team began the 13 hour drive to Denver, with an overnight stop in Kearney, Nebraska. On Wednesday, the team finished the trek into Colorado and made a stop at Magnus Feedyard, a 35,000 head feedlot operation in Wiggins, Colorado, where they had several classes of feedlot cattle available to judge. After Magnus, the team would stop at Bruce’s for lunch, a home of the Colorado Tradition of Rocky Mountain Oysters. Bright and early Thursday morning, the team headed up to Colorado State University at Fort Collins for a workout, where they saw 6 classes of market and breeding stock in one final preparation for the contest. Throughout the week, the team had been giving sets of oral reasons at night to be as successful as possible in the contest, where we would be giving six sets. Friday morning, we headed to the National Western Coliseum and settled in for the contest where we would judge 12 difficult classes of livestock, and follow that with six sets of oral reasons. After a long day, we attended the awards banquet, where we heard our names called several times. Audrina was 8th in Sheep, Kyle was sixth in Swine and ninth in oral reasons, the team was second in Swine, the team was sixth overall in the contest, and top ten in oral reasons. While not the exact result the team was hoping for, it was still a strong performance that represented our chapter and Iowa well.