Hughson poultry team tops nation

The nation’s best young judges of poultry this year came from Hughson High School – experts on what makes a good egg or turkey breast or chicken patty.

The four-person team placed first among 38 at the national convention of Future Farmers of America, held last month in Louisville, Kentucky.

Three of them – senior Kristen Voss and juniors Mark Borges and Madelyn Vaca – talked Wednesday with The Modesto Bee about the experience. The fourth, Zach Rose, graduated in the spring but stayed with the team while starting poultry-science studies at the University of Arkansas.

The contestants were scored in part on how well they noted details in live poultry and fresh carcasses, such as the expected yield of meat and any parts that were discolored. They looked at eggs to see if the shells were stained or “decidedly misshapen,” as the manual puts it. They examined frozen, breaded chicken for “coating voids” and other defects.

“We are basically mock USDA graders throughout the competition, trying to put the best product on the consumer’s table,” Vaca said.

Poultry judging was one of 24 events involving career skills in Louisville; others included crop and livestock production, public speaking, marketing and flower arranging. FFA has about 580,000 members across the nation and about 70,000 in California, all of them in agriculture classes.

The Hughson team is coached by ag teacher Kelly Larson and Brenda Vaca, who is the mother of Madelyn Vaca and assistant superintendent of the Hughson Unified School District.

“The students have to put the time in and understand the manual cover to cover,” Larson said.

The team has practiced on donated poultry from Foster Farms and eggs from Gemperle Farms, both major parts of their industries in Stanislaus County. Other donors helped with travel expenses. The team also won a trip to the International Production & Processing Expo, a meat and egg gathering in Atlanta in January.

The Hughson campus does not have live chickens or turkeys, so the students go one day a week to work with animals at Modesto Junior College. Hughson does have one key piece of equipment – a light that reveals the interior of an egg when the shell is pressed against it. Students can look for spots, poorly developed air cells and other defects.

Rose already is moving toward a poultry career, and his teammates said they may do the same. Rose and Borges had experience with these creatures from 4-H, but the girls did not.

FFA, founded in 1928, is thriving along with the agricultural economy in general. The annual convention involves teams that had earlier won at the state level.

One other thing about the Hughson team: “After the competition, we definitely don’t eat chicken,” Borges said. “We’re chickened out.”

This story was originally published November 12, 2014 at 4:17 PM with the headline "Hughson poultry team tops nation."