Layne Taylor Ag Ed and FFA advisor has no idea how many FFA contests have been held since 1935. It takes a considerable amount of work to put on an FFA Livestock and Range contest. He was frustrated that all the events were being canceled because of Covid-19. The problem was they didn't want all the kids from all the schools mingling together, so he decided to have the schools come at different times and complete the Livestock and Range competition relatively separate from each other. Ten schools participated, including Big Sandy, Columbus, Deer Lodge, Valier, Fort Benton, Shelby, Grass range, Judith Gap, and Big Timber.
Big Sandy's Junior Livestock team took first place. Individually Reinhard Bold took first, Conner Sibra 9th, and Jaycee Worral 11th.
Big Sandy took first place in Senior Range with Lance Rutledge taking first, Angie Sant 2nd, Jaycee Worral 3rd, and Austin Haugen 4th.
In Senior Livestock, Angie Sant took 8th, Rusty Gasvoda took 11th, and Cooper Taylor took 16th.
Although it was Lane, who accepted the challenge to put together the competition, he had a lot of help. The Nation Resources Conservation Service, NRCS, helped by teaching the kids. The IX Ranch and Rich Roth provided the opportunity to judge 30 range plants. Hoops were placed on the ground to judge the utilizing indexes, the quality of grass. Was it slightly, moderately, or heavily-grazed? What is the health of the range?
The last station was dealing with soils. They looked at the texture of the soil. What kind of soil was it?
The Saddle club allowed them to use their facility, and Kelly and Kristie Rutledge brought in livestock; beef, sheep, and pigs six pens with four animals in each pen. The students had to judge the livestock from top to bottom. They also had to defend their voting by speaking to the judges. Rutledge also got a college judging team to travel to Big Sandy to help judge along with Bob Nelson.
Others who helped were Tracy Rodewald with registration, Kristen Gasvoda administered the written test, Tannin Works volunteered to help with the scoring, and Amy Sibra helped with the range competition.
