{"id":17424,"date":"2014-03-07T10:00:55","date_gmt":"2014-03-07T16:00:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/?p=17424"},"modified":"2014-03-07T05:16:45","modified_gmt":"2014-03-07T11:16:45","slug":"apsu-beef-show-team-wins-at-dixie-national","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/2014\/03\/07\/apsu-beef-show-team-wins-at-dixie-national\/","title":{"rendered":"APSU Beef Show Team wins at Dixie National"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"AustinClarksville, TN<\/strong> – The four members of the Austin Peay State University Beef Cattle Show Team woke up around 2:30am on February 9th and went to work grooming a heifer in the livestock pen.<\/p>\n

Since September, they\u2019d spent most of their free time at the APSU Farm and Environmental Education Center, making sure the animal was in tip-top shape, and in a few hours, they hoped all their hard work would pay off.<\/p>\n

\"APSU<\/a>

APSU Beef Cattle Show Team’s heifer was named Senior Calf Champion at the Dixie National Livestock show.<\/p><\/div>\n

\u201cWe didn\u2019t travel eight hours to not compete,\u201d Matt Barnett, an APSU junior, said.<\/p>\n

The team \u2013 made up of Barnett and APSU students Lucas Haley and Jackson Price and community volunteer Tyler Davis \u2013 was in Jackson, MS, that morning for the Dixie National Livestock show, and over the next five hours, the students continued to prep the young cow for the competition.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019d put in a lot of hard work,\u201d Haley, an APSU junior, said. \u201cWe started this team with the intention to win, be successful, get our name out there and get our school\u2019s name out there.\u201d<\/p>\n

That afternoon, they more than achieved that goal when the team\u2019s heifer was named Senior Calf Champion. A picture of the winning heifer and the APSU Beef Cattle Show Team will appear in several national cattle magazines in the next few months, bringing notoriety to the University\u2019s Department of Agriculture and to the hard-working students.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis group has spent 10 to 15 hours a week, sometimes working in the mud, the cold, the freezing rain and the snow,\u201d Dr. Rod Mills, Austin Peay State University assistant professor of agriculture and the team\u2019s advisor, said. \u201cThey\u2019ve been working with this heifer since September of last year. The judge really, really liked her. He said from the shoulder back, she was superior to the rest of them.\u201d<\/p>\n

The University organized the team about a year ago, thanks to the generous support of Mark and Betty Barnett, co-owners of the Kentucky-Tennessee Livestock Market. The couple decided to sponsor the student team as a way of promoting the APSU Department of Agriculture.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe came up with a strategic plan to get Austin Peay\u2019s name out there,\u201d Betty said. \u201cWe thought the beef show team would be the best way to get their name in the surrounding communities. They go to the different community fairs. They have their sign up for Austin Peay. But winning at the Dixie Nationals, we\u2019re very proud.\u201d<\/p>\n

[320left]Dr. Don Sudbrink, chair of department, also credited Mills and APSU President Tim Hall with the team\u2019s success.<\/p>\n

\u201cRod has really done so much in such a short period of time,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd President Hall has made so many things possible here on this campus, especially for our agriculture program, and we are forever indebted to him for all his assistance.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hall has labeled the department one of the University\u2019s \u201chot spots.\u201d It is the fastest growing college department of agriculture in Tennessee, with student enrollment in that program increasing by 75 percent in the last five years.<\/p>\n

The department now has four full-time faculty members, along with an agriculture advisory committee, made up of local leaders, to help maintain its growth and service to the community.<\/p>\n

For more information on the department or the Beef Show Team, call 931.221.7272.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Clarksville, TN – The four members of the Austin Peay State University Beef Cattle Show Team woke up around 2:30am on February 9th and went to work grooming a heifer in the livestock pen. Since September, they\u2019d spent most of their free time at the APSU Farm and Environmental Education Center, making sure the animal […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[5],"tags":[23,22184,10061,5082,22185,11642,262,22192,512,825,22191,22190,22188,22194,22187,22193,22186,20721,1758,1342,22189],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4xGYI-4x2","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17424"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17424"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17424\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17426,"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17424\/revisions\/17426"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17424"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17424"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17424"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}