Beef 4-H is a youth development program that teaches young people how to raise and care for beef cattle while building essential life skills. Participants engage in hands-on livestock management, learning about feeding, health, breeding, and handling practices. Through structured educational projects, they explore topics like nutrition, digestion, reproduction, and marketing within the beef industry. The program emphasizes leadership, responsibility, and decision-making, often culminating in competitions such as cattle judging and showmanship. Members also maintain detailed records of their projects, tracking costs, growth, and health data, which helps them understand the economics of cattle production and gain exposure to the broader agricultural sector.
Yale Hockey Academy U15 Prep defenseman Evan Cuthbertson has been participating in the Beef 4-H program since he turned 9 but has been showing cattle and sheep since he was five years old. He lives on a small hobby farm outside of Kamloops, BC where he takes immense pride in raising and caring for his cattle. Raising show cattle is not for the faint at heart. It takes significant dedication of feeding your animal twice a day, washing and blow drying them daily, ensuring they have clean water and a clean pen to live in. It also takes building a very strong connection with your animal when you have to halter break them (take a wild calf put a halter on it and teach it to tie up and lead) typically always good for a few bumps and bruises or the occasional broken bone, but once you have them broke you have an amazing bond with them.
All this hard work is worth it when you get to take your animal to a show and display how well you can show the animal and how great their confirmation is. Largely in part due to the countless hours spent working with his animals, Evan has seen significant success in the show ring. He has attended over 30 cattle shows in the past six years winning every honour available from Grand Champion Steer to Grand Champion Showman, including a lot of prize money and a handful of belt buckles, banners and ribbons, to display on his wall. But more importantly than all the medals and honours is the life skills he has learned, the friendships he has developed and a true understanding and appreciation for what our agricultural industry is all about and what it takes to put food on our plates in BC.
