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2019 MS 4-H Horse Championship

May 30, 2019

Announcer: Farm and Family is a production of the Mississippi State University Extension Service.

Amy Myers: Today we're talking about 2019 State Four-H Horse Championship. Hello, I'm Amy Myers, and welcome to Farm and Family. Today we're speaking with Dr. Dean Jousan, Mississippi State University Extension 4-H livestock specialist. So Dean, the State 4-H Horse Championship is just around the corner. Tell me about that event.

Dean Jousan: Amy, the State 4-H Horse Championship takes place in Jackson, will start off on Tuesday, June the 18th and go through Saturday, June the 22nd. The first couple of days we offer educational contest for our senior and junior 4-H youth to compete in, to test their knowledge and communication skills and abilities related to what they've learned in the horse project. Then we'll spend the last three and a half days or so showing horses in a variety of classes. That's a good opportunity for youth to show off what they've been able to accomplish in their horse project.

Amy Myers: Do foragers have to qualify horses to be able to ride at the state horse show? How does that process work?

Dean Jousan: Oh, we do have some classes where you have to qualify to come to the state show. They have to go to one or four district horse shows that are held about two weeks before the state show. We take the top percentage of horses in the class to be able to qualify to come to the state show. We do have another top of class that we call state only classes. Those were classes where the district does a really have the equipment and the personnel overall to be able to put on those types of classes.

Amy Myers: The schedule for the State 4-H Horse Championship is rather full. What types of classes are offered?

Dean Jousan: From our horse show perspective, we'll kick that off on Wednesday afternoon, June the 19th mid afternoon with our dressage classes. Then we'll go into our hunter classes. We'll do our over fences classes. Then we'll tear down those fences and do our hunter classes on the ground. Then we'll start off on Thursday morning with some of our ranch top classes, and some of our cattle and goat top classes. My ranch classes are really, really, really popular. We'll have a ranch trail class, and a ranch riding class, a ranch pleasure top class, and then a lot of our cattle and goats top classes. On Friday, June the 21st, we'll start with our halter classes and our showmanship classes. We'll actually split our main arena and the two rings to get those classes [underwaying 00:02:34]. After that, we'll have our performance classes, our saddle engaged in performance classes followed by our western performance classes. Also on that Friday we offer trail for our trail exhibitors. Our last day of the show is Saturday, June the 22nd, and we spend the whole day doing pole bending, barrel racing and stake races.

Amy Myers: Mississippi is one of the 13 states that are part of the southern regional 4-H Horse Championship. How do youth qualify to compete in the regional level?

Dean Jousan: It's kind of a complicated process, but for those youth that are involved with our horse show, we have it clearly outlined in our book. We try to take a proportion to go to the regional show based on the numbers that we have at the show. In addition to the show itself, what other opportunities are available to youth who are involved in horses? One of the things that I really tried to emphasize are the educational opportunities. We have six core educational contests, horse judging, a horse quiz bowl competition and hippology. Those are all team contests that test youth knowledge and skills. Then we have three horse communication contest, horse public speaking, horse individual presentation and a horse team presentation contests. So those six contest we're able to send youth to the regional level to compete.

Then we take our top team and go to Denver and January, 2020 to represent Mississippi there. We also have horse art, horse photography competitions. Those top pieces are selected through the district show to come to the state show. We actually have a stall decoration, a stall education contest. Accounting can get a stall and put together some educational component to that stall, the promote the horse project. We also have a horse tee shirt design contest. To learn more about the Mississippi 4-H Horse Program, where can we go? You can go to extension.msstate.edu, click on the link for 4-H, 4-H livestock, youth livestock. Under the related materials link, you'll see a link to the State 4-H Horse Championships.

Amy Myers: Today we've been speaking with Dean Jousan, livestock specialist. I'm Amy Myers and this has been Farm and Family. Have a great day.

Announcer: Farm and Family is a production of the Mississippi State University Extension Service.

Department: Ctr 4-H Youth Development

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