DECATUR COUNTY - Kaleb Kramer, a freshman member of the North Decatur FFA Chapter, recently won the individual state championship in the Indiana State FFA Dairy Foods Evaluation contest. The contest was held on Jan. 30 at Purdue University. Kramer placed first overall out of the 215 contestants competing in the contest.
The FFA dairy foods contest requires contestants to utilize knowledge and skills concerning several areas of the dairy food product industry. Included in the contest are areas requiring students to identify various varieties of cheese, determine whether products are made from real dairy ingredients or are made from imitation products, determine various milk flavor defects and their causes, and identify common defects with milking machine parts. In addition, students must perform a California Mastitis Test on raw milk to determine if a cow has Mastitis, a common bacterial infection of dairy cows. Finally, contestants are required to take a test over their knowledge of dairy food products, their production, and their marketing.
In addition to Kramer, two other North Decatur students also placed in the top 25 of the contest. Kelsey Johnson placed 12th and Kelsey Kramer placed 22nd. As a team, the North Decatur teams placed 11th, 12th, and 20th out of the 46 teams in the contest.
