4-H Livestock Ambassador Program

Billy Zanolini, Madison CEA-Ag/NR, and Rodney Finch, Grimes CEA-Ag/NR, provided leadership in establishing the new 4-H Livestock Ambassador Program. The program is designed to teach senior age 4-H youth advanced animal science while expanding their leadership capabilities to assist other 4-H members with the management of their livestock projects.

The program includes a 3-day 4-H Livestock Ambassador Short Course to teach livestock production and management principles and a commitment by the participant to return at least 20 hours of service in helping 4-H members with their livestock projects and teaching animal science at 4-H Club Meetings. The Short Course provides the participants with the necessary tools to educate new 4-H members on the fundamentals of livestock project management and showing.

During 2008, 12 4-H members completed the 4-H Livestock Ambassador Short Course and have begun to return their 20 hours of service. The participants were from Madison, Grimes and Walker Counties.

During 2009, this program will be expanded to include 4-H youth from other counties in District 9. Of course, the program is new to Texas 4-H. So, additional evaluation and research is needed to fully assess the benefits of this program in expanding our outreach to new youth.

Additional information and evaluation results will be posted at a later date. For now, I am asking you to consider this program for your part of District 9.

Dale A. Fritz, Ph.D.

Throw us a BONE!!!!

We need your help. Please review 4-H Connect entries closely before submitting them to the District Level for approval. This year we are finding an unusually high number of silly mistakes in the entries. Things like: Selecting 4 photography categories but only paying for three, or listing the title of the Educational Presentation but not selecting a category in which to compete. When these mistakes are made all we can do is bump the entry back to the 4-Her. This creates a circular phone tag session between the 4-Her, the County Office, and the District Office..... What a mess!

Don't do it for me.... Do it for Earlene!!!!

I almost forgot; All Multi-District Judging Contest are now open for registration

Take Care,
Kevin

Events are Open

Contest season has started, meaning registration is open on 4-H Connect for many of the District Contests: Horse Judging, Photography, Roundup and Shooting Sports.

Many more will be coming online soon.

To make the system work WE NEED YOUR HELP! Please check the entries closely before submitting them. Photography and Roundup are the two with the biggest mistakes. A typical mistake in Roundup entries looks like this:

Educational Presentation Catagory - Housing and the Home Environment
Title of Presentation - Horse Shoer vs. Farrier

Either the title is wrong or the category is wrong, but the only way to correct the mistake at the District Office, is to Call You. These fields are editable by the County Office and corrections can be made prior to submitting it to the District.

Photography entries are more difficult to screen, but you can start by making sure the number of entries the contestant pays for, matches the number of categories they have selected. If these do not match up either make a correction or reject the entry.

Lastly.... Get the word out. Most contest registration has a late registration period, but the penalty is costly.

till next time,
Kevin