Lindale FFA members went to Stephenville and Waco for two Career Development Event contests March 24-26. The contests had over 9000 kids entered, and several Lindale teams placed.

“Each student is allowed to choose something that they might be interested in pursuing as a career,” ag teacher Rebecca Harrison said. “For instance, in poultry judging and evaluation, those students learn everything that they need to know to grade and evaluate poultry as if they were a USDA poultry grader.”

The teams that competed include the land judging, environmental and natural resources evaluation team, the milk quality team, the poultry judging and evaluation team, the livestock judging and evaluation team, the horse evaluation team, the vet tech and medicine team, the floriculture evaluation team and the dairy cattle evaluation team.

“The kids did great,” Harrison said. “Our livestock judging team was in the top 25. We had kids place in the top third of the competition, which when you think about each team having four to five students, each event can have 500 kids in it. That is a very good placement.”

According to vet tech team member Ashlie Thompson, CDEs offer much more than more knowledge. They learn very important lessons.

“I learned to rely on my teammates more,” vet-tech team member Ashlie Thompson said. “Vet Tech is a very fact-based contest, so we wouldn’t have done as well if we didn’t practice as much.”