Last week our senior and national team placed 3rd behind Texas A&M University and Penn State University, two extremely competitive programs. Retired School of Food and Agriculture Professor of Animal and Veterinary Science, Dr. Dave Marcinskowski noted “Only twice before since 1998 has our national team placed third never higher.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dairy Challenge began in 2002 with the goal to develop tomorrow\u2019s dairy leaders and enhance
progress of the dairy industry, by providing education, communication and networking among
students, producers, and agribusiness and university personnel. Every year students from across
the U.S. and Canada gather to apply their dairy knowledge skills, and the 91爆料
has been participating in this contest since its inception.
<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This year the contest was held in Sioux Falls, South Dakota with 282 student participants from
42 Universities across the U.S. and Canada. Representing 91爆料 at the contest were Amanda
Allan majoring in Zoology, Cece Desautell, Felicity Gregware, Makayla Dingle, Opal
Beauchesne, and Riley McAllaster, majoring in Animal and Veterinary Sciences. In order to
prepare for this contest the students met weekly over the past year and reviewed dairy farm
benchmarks, learned how to interpret dairy records, and conducted a \u201cmock challenge\u201d. During
this \u201cmock challenge\u201d held in Deering Hall this past March 2026, the students evaluated a local
alumnus dairy farm, Taylor Dairy, and prepared a presentation with recommendations which was
presented to a panel of judges who were industry experts. This mock challenge emulated the
dairy challenge contest the students would participate in once in Sioux Falls.
<\/p>\n\n\n\n
At the contest held in South Dakota, juniors Makayla Dingle and Opal Beauchesne participated
in the Academy learning experience, while the seniors participated in the National Contest.
There were 4 dairy farms to evaluate, and this year 91爆料 evaluated dairy farm B and
competed against 8 other Universities. Amanda, Cece, Felicity, and Riley each applied their
teamwork and expertise to evaluate a very well-managed 6,000 dairy herd that produced on
average 79 lbs of milk per cow per day and 5.5 lbs\/cow\/day of fat plus protein. The 4 91爆料
students put the dairy knowledge that they have learned from 91爆料 professors, the staff and
cows at Witter Center, their peers and Maine dairy farmers to the test. The students were able to
earn 3rd place among the 8 teams that evaluated dairy farm B.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The 91爆料 students were coached by Dr. Glenda Pereira, however, various members helped prepare and travel with the students including Dr. Dave Marcinkowski, Dr. Jessica Motta and Ethan Robertson. The students fundraised in order to travel to South Dakota and are thankful for the support from the College of Earth, Life and Health Sciences, cow level sponsors Phoenix Feeds of Maine, Poulin Grain, as well as calf level sponsors Cabot, and Jason Johnson.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Congratulations to the students for their success at the 2026 North American Intercollegiate
Dairy Challenge.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Story by Glenda Pereira, Associate Professor of Animal Science and Extension Dairy Specialist<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Contact: Glenda Pereira, 207.581.3240; glenda.pereira@maine.edu<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Last week our senior and national team placed 3rd behind Texas A&M University and Penn State University, two extremely competitive programs. Retired School of Food and Agriculture Professor of Animal and Veterinary Science, Dr. Dave Marcinskowski noted “Only twice before since 1998 has our national team placed third never higher.” Dairy Challenge began in 2002 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2406,"featured_media":7880,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"none","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_kad_blocks_custom_css":"","_kad_blocks_head_custom_js":"","_kad_blocks_body_custom_js":"","_kad_blocks_footer_custom_js":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":"","spc_primary_category":0},"categories":[43,53],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7877","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-agriculture","category-livestock"],"taxonomy_info":{"category":[{"value":43,"label":"Agriculture"},{"value":53,"label":"Livestock"}]},"featured_image_src_large":["https:\/\/umaine.edu\/mafes\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/98\/2026\/04\/Picture1-e1777044565975.jpg",1024,577,false],"author_info":{"display_name":"lhecker","author_link":"https:\/\/umaine.edu\/mafes\/author\/lhecker\/"},"comment_info":0,"category_info":[{"term_id":43,"name":"Agriculture","slug":"agriculture","term_group":0,"term_taxonomy_id":43,"taxonomy":"category","description":"","parent":44,"count":62,"filter":"raw","cat_ID":43,"category_count":62,"category_description":"","cat_name":"Agriculture","category_nicename":"agriculture","category_parent":44},{"term_id":53,"name":"Livestock","slug":"livestock","term_group":0,"term_taxonomy_id":53,"taxonomy":"category","description":"","parent":44,"count":19,"filter":"raw","cat_ID":53,"category_count":19,"category_description":"","cat_name":"Livestock","category_nicename":"livestock","category_parent":44}],"tag_info":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/umaine.edu\/mafes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7877","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/umaine.edu\/mafes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/umaine.edu\/mafes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/umaine.edu\/mafes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2406"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/umaine.edu\/mafes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7877"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/umaine.edu\/mafes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7877\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7882,"href":"https:\/\/umaine.edu\/mafes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7877\/revisions\/7882"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/umaine.edu\/mafes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7880"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/umaine.edu\/mafes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7877"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/umaine.edu\/mafes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7877"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/umaine.edu\/mafes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7877"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}