Ward County Extension Updates: November 2015

A few years back, the major livestock shows got together and made it a requirement that all junior livestock exhibitors had to undergo the Quality Counts Program before entering their shows.

The Quality Counts program is a curriculum geared towards youth showing livestock projects that teaches both meat quality assurance and character education.

Any exhibitor who wishes to show at SandHills, Ft. Worth, San Angelo, San Antonio, Houston, Austin or the State Fair of Texas must undergo the Quality Counts course and pass the verification exam with a score of at least 80.

Exhibitors aged 9-13 must take the junior exam. Exhibitors 14-18 must take the senior exam. Once the exam is passed, the exhibitor will only have to retake the test when the graduate from the junior to the senior level.

Follow these instructions to take the Quality Counts "Texas Trail" Course. The course takes about 3 hours to complete.

You can take the verification exam without taking the course, BUT IT IS HIGHLY ENCOURAGED THAT YOU TAKE THE COURSE BEFORE TAKING THE EXAM.

Once you've completed the course, it is time to take the verification exam. The exam can be accessed at http://qc.wieghatgraphics.com/. This should be the screen you see when you access the website:

Once you click the "4-H" icon, the next page will ask you to enter the exhibitors name, birth date, and county:

After you enter your information, you will be prompted to take the exam. It consists of 10 multiple choice questions. Be sure to write down or print the review questions from the "Texas Trails" course to study for this exam.

After you've completed the course you should come to this page, below. If you passed with an 80%, or higher you can click the bottom link to print your certificate of completion. If you did not score an 80% or higher, you can review which questions you missed, and retake the test as many times as needed to get the 80% score.

NOTE: The questions from this exam come from a pool, so you will not get the same questions each attempt. Do not feel bad if you do not pass it on the first try: many exhibitors have to take it multiple times to pass!

Once you've completed & passed the exam, and clicked the print certificate of completion link, this is the page you'll be prompted to. Please print two copies: one for our records and one for yours. If you ever lose your copy, we can retrieve the number from our end of the database.