Covey and Looper are already recruiting members for the judging team, which will be made up of students in Covey's spring and fall dairy cattle evaluation classes. They just need to have an interest in dairy judging. Covey plans to start out with the basics. The students will learn to provide oral reasons in judging, and then we'll visit area dairies to practice judging. Then we'll progress to the real contests.
Covey is no novice at starting a dairy judging team from the ground up.
As a student at Oklahoma State University, where he received a bachelor's degree in agricultural communications, he helped revive a judging team which had been defunct for several years. Covey and his younger sister, Amy, were both founding members of the new team. Wis. Looper said the Madison competition is widely regarded in the dairy industry as the premier dairy show and contest. Covey grew up on a dairy in Locust Grove, Okla., where his parents, Barbara and Stan, still run the business. His father is an accomplished dairy judge and continues to judge several state fairs each year.